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THE ANALYTICS 



OF A 



■ s BELIEF IN A FUTURE LIFE 



BY 






L. P." GRATACAP, M.A 



AUTHOR OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF RITUAL 




NEW YORK 
JAMES POTT & CO., PUBLISHERS 

14 and 16 Astor Place 
1888 



/ 



Copyright, 1888, by 
JAMES POTT & CO. 






Thb Library 
^ C«>n«ress ; 

^VSaiNGTON 



Press of J. J. Little & Co. 
Astor Place, New York. 



TO THE MEMORY OF 
LUCINDA BENTON GRATACAP 

ftfms §aok 

AS A TRIBUTE OF THOUGHT 
IS DEDICATED. 



PREFACE. 



Some people are much tormented by their fluctuating 
anticipations of a future life, many are at once curious and 
sceptical about it, and others, leaning upon generally received 
opinions, and, above all, Christian teaching, are constantly 
startled, in their reviews of their own ideas, to find both the 
belief in a future life and the ground of revelation upon which 
it rested seriously disturbed. A large number probably 
accept it, act on their acceptance, and approach death with 
mingled feelings of amazement, alarm, and hope. To most of 
the individuals of these groups the following chapters may 
prove of interest. 

What can be said about this question has, we think, never 
been gathered into a single aggregate of statements or in a 
line of consecutive suggestions, and the scientific postulates 
(always indispensable in an argument) have not been fairly, 
or at any rate exhaustively, examined in regard to it. They 
have not been fairly examined by Christian teachers because 
they offer very slender support, in the way of proof , to this 
central article of Christian creeds, while they have suffered 
from a mutilated presentation or a half-collapsed and senile 
appreciation of their force as establishing a reasonable basis 
for hope. Their relation to Revelation in this matter, the 
positive and unavoidable necessity to-day of their study 
before rational inquirers will even turn to Revelation for an 
expression of any kind, has not been always understood, even 
by the average Agnostic or the average Believer. While the 
former was indifferent, content to exempt his science from 
the strain of any sentimental predilections, the latter was 



vi Preface. 

hostile or aggravated because he thought his religion invaded 
by a pugnacious scepticism. 

The real truth seems to be that there has been a distortion 
of facts by which religion has been the loser, as the believer 
was himself the chief culprit. The scientific mind per se is 
too little interested in this subject to run the risk of making 
a misstatement, because it cares to make none at all, though 
scientific writers and the tribe of pseudo-scientific reporters 
have often injured the truth, as far as science is concerned, 
by both a display of spiteful belligerency against, and a com- 
placent credulity in, the belief in a future life. The believer 
however, anxious to avert the powerful objections of science, 
as he thinks, whereas science has no objections at all, fights 
the conceptions of science, which appear to be in his way, 
when unluckily the conception is true, but also absolutely 
irrelevant as for or against the doctrine defended. 

We do not claim to have comprehensively treated this topic, 
or spoken the last word about it. That would be the worst 
form of pragmatism and conceit. But we believe the true 
relations of science to revealed religion in regard to a belief 
in another life are more clearly shown than they have been 
before, and the philosophic grounds of an ethnic belief in a 
future life more accurately analyzed. 

Again, as supplementary to the discussion of the scientific 
aspect of the question, which at the end of Analysis I. simply 
leaves the reader in an attitude of attention, willingly recep- 
tive, and mentally indisposed, so far as proof goes, to be- 
lieve or doubt, we have examined the Christian aspect of the 
problem. Here we have encroached on the tract of the theo- 
logian, and we have done so with perhaps less modesty and 
apprehension than the result will justify. But, as we believe 
the misunderstanding of the contents of the true scientific 
position in regard to a future life springs partially from a cor- 
related misunderstanding of the Christian Revelation or its 



Preface. vii 

implications in regard to the same, we have yielded to the 
imperious call of logic to enter the latter field, realizing that 
the relations of both are close, and that a somewhat different 
view of Revelation brings into a new juxtaposition science 
and Christianity in this matter, and that certain, so to speak, 
salient propositions deduced from our scientific analysis are 
elevated into dogmas in our analysis of Christ's Revelation, 
and become the reciprocals of those. 

An increasing interest in such questions, when discussed in 
new ways, together with the alert and restless appetency for 
their re-discussion, has prompted us to prepare this study. 
With the public the fate of its positions rests ; for, however 
satisfactory they may appear to our private judgment, the 
relentless processes of criticism and the fashion of mental 
habits must be met upon a large arena, where neither 
sympathy nor friendship can protect their claims. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Introduction 3 

PART I. 

Analysis from Science. 

Chapter I. Personal Identity, the Fact 37 

Chapter II. Personal Identity, its Implication 73 

Chapter III. Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. .. 97 
Chapter IV. Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind 

{Continued) 134 

Chapter V. Form and Durability of the Ego 175 

Chapter VI. The Force of Desire and a Moral Judg- 
ment 205 

Chapter VII. The Conclusion ... 228 

PART II. 

Analysis from Revelation. 

Chapter I. The Individual in Christianity 243 

Chapter II. Desire and the Moral Judgment in Reve- 
lation 279 

Chapter III. The Conclusion 304 



MAN'S BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. 



Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race ; 

Call on the lazy leaden-stepping Hours, 
Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace ; 

And glut thyself with what thy womb devours, 
Which is no more than what is false and vain, 

And merely mortal dross ; 

So little is our loss, 
So little is thy gain ! 

For when as each thing bad thou hast entomb'd, 
And, last of all, thy greedy self consumed, 
Then long eternity shall greet our bliss 
With an individual kiss ; 
And joy shall overtake us as a flood, 
When everything that is sincerely good, 
And perfectly divine, 

With truth, and peace, and love, shall ever shine 
About the supreme throne 
Of Him, to whose happy-making sight alone 
When once our heavenly guided soul shall climb, 

Then, all this earthly grossness quit, 

Attired with stars we shall forever sit, 
Triumphing over death, and chance, and thee, O Time ! 

—Milton. 



INTRODUCTION. 

THE SUBSTANCE OF MAN'S BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. 

It would probably afford a singular display of idiosyncrasies, 
aberrant egotism and deliberate self-delusion, if an inquiry, 
made of a miscellaneous gathering of men and women, could 
reveal their personal expectations or wishes in regard to a 
future life. Perhaps the majority would exhibit a very aver- 
age and very uninteresting blankness of mind about the 
whole question ; but we would be certain to find a sufficient 
number who would compensate for this practical indiffer- 
ence to, or commonplace acquiescence in the current faith, 
by expressing lively hopes for this and that good, and by 
fancies about the ways and means of gaining and maintain- 
ing immortality, which would scare the eschatology of the 
boldest parson into silence. Every passing gleam of denied 
acquirements or possessions which they had caught in the 
lives of others, every vagrant theory of processes of post- 
humous promotion, and every idle whim or insane hope of 
delectable fruitions would be combined, and mingling with 
them a diablerie of sciolism as to how and when and where 
all this magnificence and ecstasy was to be attained. 

Probably we would get the most entertaining results — from 
a literary point of view — from an examination of maddened 
illuminati, plagued artists, and oratorical, slipshod, mentally 
disheveled doctrinaires. Here would fuse into a cement or 
paste of intellectual iridescence the cranial ferments of cranks 
and poetasters, and the malicious silex of moneyless and 
writhing Jeremiahs. The utter baselessness of thought, 
springing from ignorance and presumption, would be given 
a certain status by the inflation of monstrous imaginings. 



Introduction. 



And such an assemblage of notions could scarcely be 
derided so far as any natural criteria of knowledge are estab- 
lished. What do we know about the facts of the case ? We 
have on one hand the hints of revelation (perhaps in places 
apocryphal at that) about which devout tradition and anthro- 
pomorphic Christianity have fastened idle tales and fancies, 
and on the other hand the horrible compounds of spiritual- 
ism and ghosts, or the tender ravings of Swedenborg, the 
mad poetry of William Blake, and the gusty confessions of 
Mr. I. C. Street,* while sitting in our midst is a wise Science 
that remains half amused at all. 

One obvious cause of these persistent hopes to-day in an- 
other life is largely our human egoism, our inveterate self- 
consciousness and self-interest which projects us unceasingly 
before our own eyes on an endless back and fore ground of 
never-ending events and exploits. This feeling allows us 
also to hope in a second existence, or a whole ascending 
chain of serial existences, from the average disappointment 
of this life, and a keen sense that, given a little more chance 
and more nimble wits, we would make a better showing next 
time. And with this go human aspirations seeking finer 
realities than we know, and wishing for nobler virtues than 
we have, and then there is human love ever uttering its 
lament over lost friends and interrupted amours and severed 
friendships. Of course the most unhappy who have been 
so strangled by misfortune and losing fights, those that have 
lost all confidence and pleasure in themselves, or the con- 
sciously incapable and degraded, are not unwilling to hope 

* " The Hidden Way Across the Threshold," written by this gentle- 
man, has been sententiously criticised in Science in these words : 

" Considering the volume as the sincere and earnest expression of an 
enthusiast for the spiritual side of life — and this is the most charitable 
point of view — it is still a pernicious work. It imbeds the kernel of 
truth it contains with a husk of rubbish ; it chokes up ' the threshold ' 
with a refuse heap." 



Introduction. 5 



that this life is the end of the matter, and the restlessness of 
happier or more ambitious souls seems to them at least curi- 
ous. Again, those who grasp life like a rich orange, and 
squeeze and suck it dry, emptying its tissues of sense and 
feeling and all manner of delights into the prosperous veins 
of their animated and gifted natures, may be willing enough, 
after the surfeit, to drop off into annihilation complete and 
irreversible. Then there are those who, in this day, with no 
especial interest in the question, think a future life quite un- 
necessary and physiologically impossible. 

Most of men, however, cling to the hope, and would be 
quite unwilling to drop it out of their customary thoughts. 
If they have a religion, it becomes the most prominent and 
probably the most satisfactory article in their faith, at least 
if they have not, in a moment's intense contemplation, felt 
the almost tragic terror of the conception of "everlasting 
life." We joke about it, make it a limbo of amusing occur- 
rences, and a play-ground for imaginative sky-rockets. But, 
strike it out absolutely from the sum of possible things, and 
we know its effective coercive tension over men's actions 
would become apparent by the disruption of moral restraint 
and the outrageous cavortings of our tightly-reined lusts. 

Races display the idea in their religions, and in advanced 
systems it has had a very real bearing on the tenor of their 
actual life. Almost all wild people are actuated by a con- 
fident belief in some sort of a disembodied existence, and 
the celebrated ghost-theory of Herbert Spencer, by which he 
attempts to explain the origin of religion, rests on the gen- 
eralization that uncivilized tribes believe that the spirits of 
the dead wander upon the surface of the earth and become 
resident in certain natural objects, afterwards considered 
sacred. And the recent elaborate amplification of a scheme 
of Folk Lore by Sir R. C. Temple begins with a department 
of spirit worship, in which ancestor worship and guardian 



6 Introduction. 



ancestor spirits introduce a long line of subdivisions relating 
to spirits, their classes, habitats and qualities. 

The religion of Christ has given a startling significance to 
the untrained and heterogeneous desires and instincts of 
mankind in regard to a future life, and without perhaps 
making them any more natural, has dignified them, and to 
many has made them reasonably certain of some sort of 
realization. This religion — Christianity — has ; apparently 
successfully, through its culture of the spiritual nature of 
man, blended its appeals to man's hopes and affections 
without stultifying itself by lowering its standards to man's 
selfishness, self-will, or self-love. We mean, of course, 
Christianity as best understood and taught, for certainly the 
eschatology of some phases of Christianity has been as odi- 
ous as the bric-a-brac of a Turk's hell or the rococo of a 
Zulu's paradise. 

Primarily there must have been in man promptings, aris- 
ing from some deeply seated elements of his intellectual and 
emotional nature, to some faith in another life, for Chris- 
tianity could only establish its influence on the basis of 
human nature as it found it, and could not have inaugurated 
any new departure of feeling. Nor did it design to. It 
seized the whole bundle of normal concepts and prognosti- 
cations in man and elevated them, while it enlightened or 
pretended to enlighten him by a revelation, which gave those 
thoughts and premonitions a new dignity, with a difference 
also. So, if we can disengage the mental elements of man's 
faith, everywhere the world over, in a continued being after 
this life, we shall have gotten, so to speak, the ingredients of 
the emotional matrix which Christianity had to leaven and 
sweeten with its own best teaching. 

Nor is this all, for we do not intend to give this investiga- 
tion solely a theological bias. If we can define the elemen- 
tal ideas or motives involved in the doctrine or belief (for it 



Introduction. 



is not always a doctrine) of immortality, we can work more 
intelligently and usefully at the merely scientific aspect of 
the problem. The rational elements determining this wide- 
spread and important anticipation of a future life are, we 
think, threefold, and emanate from our mental, moral, and 
emotional natures, each contributing an impulse of thought 
or feeling in this direction. These impulses are certainly not 
always equally balanced; that is, the predetermining effective- 
ness of each to make an individual or a race accept the idea 
of immortality as a fact, are seldom of the same value, and 
disposition or experience will make one or the other more 
prominent in the appeal made by them all. An appeal, made 
in combination, to our consciousness, as furnishing ground 
for this conviction, or if not an appeal, a vague substratum of 
feeling in which these elements are all confusedly, perhaps 
indistinguishably, mingled. 

These three thoughts or determinative sentiments we con- 
ceive are : first, a sense of a personal identity, indestructible 
and self-existent ; second, a desire for gratification, complete, 
unbroken, and persistent ; third, a moral judgment implying 
the punishment of sin and the reward of virtue. 

It is evident that we cannot expect to find men, or groups 
of men, customarily expounding and fixing these ideas in 
their minds and studies as the categorical components of 
their spiritual expectations and aspirations for a future life, 
though we might discover that a little interrogation would 
bring them quickly to the surface, as consciously recognized 
and unerringly appreciated. The belief in a future life has 
become so largely part of an affirmative faith, that the pro- 
fessor of a* Christian creed seldom realizes upon what 
grounds, other than those of revelation, it rests as a belief 
simply. In these other grounds there is absolutely no proof 
whatever, and the inherent probability they favor, in the esti- 
mation of some, is to others an accidental fallacy in nature; 



Introduction. 



and these latter, as they reject Christianity, find its utterances 
on this subject also purely worthless. Their position is, 
therefore, entirely skeptical, though they may not have fol- 
lowed the theme so far as to convince themselves that any 
life but the one we lead is impossible. 

But it is not philosophical, or in human science consistent, 
to deride or neglect an inclination demonstrably founded on 
a series of universally spontaneous arguments. If these are 
intrinsically respectable, and if they are explicitly recognized 
in human thought everywhere, becoming as it were insepa- 
rable factors of a mental conviction wherever human cogni- 
tion has advanced far enough to survey its objective and 
subjective circumstances, then their rejection without exami- 
nation implies a mental suicide, and is an outrage on the logic 
of our human position. We have conceded that they do not 
prove a future life and that many men and races do not dis- 
cern them at all, though it would seem oftentimes that some 
process of unconscious ratiocination has guided these same 
men and peoples to this belief. These notions must have 
darkly or directly influenced their argument, because there do 
not seem possible any other primal instigations to the belief 
in a future life as strong or active as these, nor any which 
cannot ultimately be resolved into these. We will further 
concede that their constituent conceptions, as identity, pleas- 
ure, right, and wrong, may be so regarded as to destroy their 
validity as legitimate arguments altogether. Yet at least we 
feel entitled to open our examination with an attempt to 
prove that these three elements of thought or feeling can be 
considered as effective, from some points of view, in inclining 
men to regard favorably this affirmation of a second existence, 
and that they have actually done so. The metaphysical or 
psychological considerations that sustain them are deferred 
at present. 

And examining the first element of the Substance of Man's 



Introduction. g 



Belief in a Future Life, viz., "the Sense of Personal Identity- 
indestructible and irreversible," we are compelled to observe, 
first, what may be signified by the word Identity, and sec- 
ondly, what forms of Identity there may be outside of con- 
sciousness of Self. 

By Identity we mean that which separates an object of 
thought or attention clearly from all other objects, and con- 
tinuously as the same object. And this Identity resides either 
in a group of characterizations, attributes, or parts, or in an 
existence involved in the object, dominating it, producing its 
clear and continuous definition from everything else even 
through a serial prolongation of states. 

Whether the above language defines a name or a thing, or 
both,* it clearly embraces two ideas, that of a mechanical or 
organic structure, and that of an insoluble and noumenal 
activity underlying phenomena and moods, as both consti- 
tuting identity, f An illustration of the former species of 
Identity is a sofa, a chair, a desk, a cannon. The peculiar 

* Mill's "Logic," Book L, Chap. VIII., Of Definition. 

\ The definition of identity given by Locke may be usefully quoted here, 
though it implies but little recognition of certain facts of Natural History, 
some made evident since its author wrote : " In this consists identity when 
the ideas it is attributed to vary not at all from what they were that 
moment wherein we consider their former existence, and to which we 
compare the present ; for we, never finding nor conceiving it possible that 
two things of the same kind should exist in the same place at the same 
time, we rightly conclude that whatever exists anywhere at any time, 
excludes all of the same kind, and is there itself alone. When, therefore, 
we demand whether anything be the same or no ? it refers always to some- 
thing that existed such a time in such a place, which it was certain at that 
instant was the same with itself, and no other ; from whence it follows 
that one thing cannot have two beginnings of existence nor two things one 
beginning ; it being impossible for two things of the same kind to be or 
exist in the same instant in the very same place or one and'the same thing 
in different places. That, therefore, that had one beginning is the same 
thing ; and that which had a different beginning in time and place from 
that is not the same but diverse." 



io Introduction. 



and complete expression of these objects is the result of the 
mingling and conjoined peculiarities of each part, and they 
(the objects) are more or less easily separated from each 
other as these component parts possess more or less striking 
characteristics, though in all cases, theoretically, inspection 
would reveal some difference which would distinguish each.* 
This separateness is their identity. Decay, artificial altera- 
tion, may change very radically the sofa, the chair, the desk, 
or the cannon; but they can be momentarily identified without 
difficulty, and their status is unequivocal, for at least a rea- 
sonable period of time. Their identity is lost in such decay 
and alteration, gradually blending with a new identity, the 
whole process of change being summed up in a series of 
aspects, each one of which has a cognizable difference, and 
which would serve at an instant of time for their determina- 
tion. The sofa might assume a new pattern, the chair 
become a stool, the desk pass into a table, or the cannon be 
transformed into a fence post, yet the chain of interlinked 
invaginated changes consists of a group of stages, in each 
one of which is a separate identity. 

It is evident to those familiar with the language of the 
schoolmen that, according to our definition, a change of 
identity would often be tantamount to simply a difference, 
viz., aXXoiov, though of course extended to such other radical 
changes as, by altering the properties of a thing, make it 
aXXo, another thing ; thus a lump of ice pounded into small 
particles still remains ice though different, aXXoiov, but 
melted it becomes water, something else, aXXo (Mill) ; but in 
both cases there has taken place, as we express it, a change of 
identity. It is evident that this sort of identity consists in an 
identical train of impressions produced by the object on the 

* Leibnitz's principle of the Law of Indiscernibles asserts that there 
can be no two things exactly alike. No two leaves, faces, characters, 
flowers, seeds, drops of water, etc., etc., are in all respects the same. 



Introduction. 1 1 



percipie7it* and has nothing to do with a recognition by the 
object of its own persistence, nor with an underlying modi- 
fiable activity or life principle, as in the next examples 
examined. It is also evident from our definition that this 
structural sameness of an inanimate object which forms our 
first series of identity is connected, or may be, with the pur- 
pose of the object, the idea of its construction, to which 
attaches the abstract notions of use or fitness and design, f 

Again, it is obvious, upon a little consideration, that so far 
as we introduce in this way the Theory of Types, our first 
series of identity, corresponding in part to the Physical Iden- 
tity of the Schoolmen, includes two subordinate divisions, 
that of sensible " characterizations, attributes, or parts " and 
that of a "generic conception." J To illustrate, and taking 
the case of the chair instanced above ; the identity of this 
high-backed chair, with corkscrew legs and an armorial 
escutcheon cut upon it, with a seat covered with velvet, and 
numerous skillful carvings, is made up of these things as its 
material "characterizations, attributes, or parts," and of an 
idea of a chair as a support in a certain way for the body as 
its "generic conception." Now if we paint the chair we do 
effect a change in its "characterizations," and its identity, by 

* It is essential to note here that this language implies that the " train 
of impressions" may be, for purposes of examination, extended much 
beyond the first impacts of the object upon the senses. Two chemical 
salts at different times might be mistaken for the same substance, but 
analysis causing different "trains of impressions" would decisively sepa- 
rate them. 

f David Hume, in his famous chapter on Personal Identity refers to 
this specification of thought in connection with things, when he speaks of 
"a combination to a common end ox purpose," and of " a sympathy of 
parts," which supposes " that they bear to each other the reciprocal rela- 
tion of cause and effect in all their actions and operations." 

% " The Metaphysics of the School," T. Harper, Vol. I., p. 177, et seq. 
For excellent notes on this question see " Spiritual Philosophy," by J. H. 
Green, Vol. I., p. 15. 



12 Introduction. 



our definition, is changed also, though of course in an obvious 
sense it is the same chair, but it does not evoke the same 
train of impressions in the percipient as it did before it was 
painted. It is not altogether the same chair in every sense. 
More radical alterations, as giving it an extra leg, whittling 
off its sculpture, removing the armorial shield, or replacing 
old parts with new wood, very clearly change its sensible 
identity. But we could have changed its identity as a " generic 
conception " by taking it apart and using its substance, with- 
out loss or addition, and making of it a low table. The 
sensible identity remains, but the original generic conception 
has vanished. 

And if, as a mentally conceivable position, practically 
impossible, two objects simultaneously presented to our 
observation were undistinguishable in qualities and quantity, 
still their attribute of relation * would be different for each, 
i.e., their position in space would be diverse and the retinal 
impressions of the percipient correspondingly separated. 
And even if successively introduced to our attention, so long 
as we recognize or are informed of their physical separate- 
ness, as two things, the intellectual satisfaction of a separate 
identity for each is at once made, by our knowing that the 
material that formed both cannot have occupied the same 
space, and this thought considered as referable to a " part," 
leaves our definition still unimpeached. 

Leaving this topic, which we have purposely used as intro- 
ductory, we encounter the second idea suggested by our defi- 
nition, that of " an existence involved in the object, dominat- 
ing it, producing its clear and continuous definition from 
everything else, even through a serial prolongation of states" 
whence, we urge, the germinal provocation of an instinct- 
ive belief in a future life proceeds. Reverting to the objects 

* See Mill's " Logic," Book I., Chap. III., of the things denoted by 
names. 



Introduction. 13 



of nature, we find many of them subjects of organic growth, 
of changes of very striking beauty, accompanied by very 
wonderful modifications in their physical characteristics. 
Thus a flower and a caterpillar are typical instances of pos- 
sible change by an organic growth, something quite distinct, as 
every reader appreciates, from artificial alteration, and some- 
thing possibly allocated to, and at any rate immediately sug- 
gestive of, an existence remaining constant through its (the 
flower's or worm's) " serial prolongation of states." Let us 
examine this more closely. 

The articles of furniture, the chair and sofa, may be modi- 
fied to an unlimited degree, perhaps, but every change is 
purely a mechanical addition or subtraction of parts or of 
attributes, and the agent is in every case exterior to the- ob- 
ject, and in every case, as we said above, the identity of the 
object itself changes. But in the series of states, succes- 
sional forms which the worm undergoes as it becomes a but- 
terfly, or the flower as it ripens to a fruit, the change is 
brought about by a graded infinite number of minor differ- 
ences, and the whole process originates subjectively, as it 
were, or, speaking more technically, is involved in the life- 
history of both flower and worm. The question to be an- 
swered is this : Does the identity of worm or flower remain 
inviolate in the transition ? Are the white blossoms of the 
strawberry and the delicious berry itself the same thing ? 
Are the banded caterpillar and the winged lepidopterid 
identical ? The question may provoke a smile, and a reply 
too hasty, perhaps, to answer the exigencies of a philosophic 
inquiry. 

We believe the answer, so far as its determination may 
be descried in our assumption as to, and our definition of 
Identity, can be given definitely by previously agreeing as 
to whether, in the change from flower to berry, or from grub 
to butterfly, there is an existence or not " involved in the ob- 



14 Introduction. 



ject, dominating it, producing its clear and continuous defi- 
nition from everything else, even through a serial prolonga- 
tion of states." 

However, we encounter in this case the first form of iden- 
tity, that of structure ; but it is necessarily circumscribed to 
each particular stage in the maturing of the strawberry blos- 
som to the strawberry itself, and to the same in the change 
of the caterpillar to the butterfly. They are, as it were, frac- 
tional identities, each complete in itself, of the unital identity 
about which we are now speaking. 

The natural world abounds with the marvelous examples 
of organic evolution, of processes of reproduction, of multi- 
farious re-duplications and extensions which involve difficul- 
ties of this sort, but which, in the light of our definition, we 
may regard somewhat lucidly as requiring, in some cases, 
simply more definite convictions as to the things themselves, 
and, as in others, conclusively answered. For instance, it 
must be settled as a preliminary asset of knowledge whether 
a substratum of sensation, a homogeneous motion, a biologi- 
cal unity identical, indivisible, conceivably self-existent, re- 
mains in flower and berry, in caterpillar and moth, and 
thereby perpetuates the identity of the flower through the 
intermediate changes to the berry, and that of the caterpillar 
through chrysalis and imago, before, in these cases, we can 
answer the question of identity at all. But, in some in- 
stances of " alternation of generation," where, as with an in- 
dividual of a hydroid polyp, there is originated a number of 
polyps by modification and division, or where, as in the 
fresh-water hydra, innumerable artificial slicings produce a 
corresponding number of living individuals, or when, as in 
the process of germination, a single coral animal procreates 
a colony, the puzzle needs no auxiliary determinations, as 
the plurality of derivative bodies destroys a single identity, 
which, by the terms of our definition, can be assigned to 



Introduction. 1 5 



only one thing at a time,* and we have in its place what 
might be called a composite identity, which, however, in na- 
ture is to be limited by the next act of true sexual generation 
or the physical separation of an infant organism, f We have 

* It is useful to refer, at this point, to the conception of an individual 
in the mind of a naturalist, and we quote Prof. Nicholson's acceptable 
elucidation (" Manual of Zoology," p. 27) : " In zoological language an in- 
dividual is defined as ' equal to the total result of the development of a single 
ovum.'' Amongst the higher animals there is no difficulty about this, for 
each ovum gives rise to no more than one single being, which is incapable 
of repeating itself in any other way than by the production of another 
ovum ; so that an individual is a single animal. It is important, however, 
to comprehend that this is not necessarily or always the case. In such an 
organism as the sea-mat the ovum gives rise to a primitive polypide, which 
repeats itself by a process of continuous germination until an entire colony 
is produced, each member of which is independent of its fellows and is 
capable of producing ova. In such a case, therefore, the term ' individ- 
ual ' must be applied to the entire colony, since this is the result of the 
development of a single ovum. The separate beings which compose the 
colony are technically called 'zooids.' In like manner the Hydra which 
produces fresh and independent Hydra? by discontinuous germination, is 
not an \ individual,' but is a zooid. Here the zooids are not permanently 
united one to another, and the ' individual ' Hydra consists really of the 
primitive Hydra plus all the detached Hydras to which it gave rise." 

f The language of James Mill, in his "Analysis of the Human Mind," 
when he describes the sameness of a lily as a bulb and as a flower, is of 
interest, though we think our method incorporates a true and useful idea 
in the conception of a growing, developing object of nature, which his 
does not. Mr. Mill says : " The lily, when it produces its brilliant flower 
in summer, I call the same with the plant which began to show itself 
above the surface of the ground in spring, from a bulb which I had 
planted in a particular spot of my garden. I also called it the same, from 
one day to another, though changing every day in its size and other ap- 
pearances, from its germination to the present time. For what reason 
have I done so ? On account of certain circumstances, which everybody 
can enumerate ; its rising from a certain root ; the uninterrupted conti- 
nuity, by means of the stalk, between the root and the other parts of the 
plant ; its being always found in the same place, that is, in the same syn- 
chronous order with certain other things ; its corresponding with other 
plants, the growth of which I have observed, and so on. If it had grown 
in a flower-pot, and been transferred from one to another, the enumeration 



1 6 Introduction. 



encountered within the limits of our definition identity under 
two different aspects : First, that of an inanimate or animate 
object discernibly separable into parts or not, as the case 
may be, and possessed of attributes and characterizations ; 
second, that of an existence animating a succession of 
physically diverse forms ; and we now meet a third aspect of 
identity, that of self-consciousness or Personal Identity. 

To the reader it must be apparent what is meant by Per- 
sonal Identity. Personal Identity distinctly coheres to that 
sort of identity which assumes " an existence involved in the 
object, dominating it, producing its clear and continuous 
definition from everything else, even through a serial prolon- 
gation of states" and which the metamorphoses of flower and 
caterpillar have suggested. In this case, however, there is 
no room for suggestion or vagueness. The identity is recog- 
nized by the subject identified. Quoting Sir William Hamil- 
ton,* " the expressions I know that I know — I know that I 
feel — I know that I desire — are thus translated by I am con- 
scious that I know — I am conscious that I feel — I am con- 
scious that I desire. Consciousness is thus, on the one hand, 
the recognition by the mind or Ego of its acts and affections 
— in other words, the self-affirmation that certain modifica- 
tions are known by me and that these modifications are mine. 
Though the simplest act of mind consciousness thus expresses 
a relation subsisting between two terms. These terms are, 
on the one hand, an / or Self as the subject of a certain 
modification — and on the other, some modification, state, 

of the circumstances would have been different ; the evidence of its having 
grown from the same root would have been drawn from other circum- 
stances. When I say, then, that the lily I see, with its flowers in July, is 
the same with the lily just emerging from the ground in April, I only ex- 
press my belief of its having sprung from a certain root, and of its having 
vegetated, in connection with that root, in the way of the plants grouped 
in the class called Lily." 

* " Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic"; Metaphysics, Lect. XI. 



Introduction. \j 



quality, affection, or operation belonging to the subject." 
And John Stuart Mill more expressively says: " there is a 
something I call myself, or, by another form of expression, 
my mind, which I consider as distinct from these sensations, 
thoughts, etc. ; a something which I conceive to be not the 
thoughts, but the being that has the thoughts, and which I 
can conceive as existing forever in a state of quiescence, with- 
out any thoughts at all. But what this being is, although 
it is myself, I have no knowledge, further than the series of 
its states of consciousness,"* and again, "as body is the 
unsentient cause to which we are naturally prompted to refer 
a certain portion of our feelings, so mind may be described 
as the sentient subject (in the German sense of the term) of 
all feelings, that which has or feels them." 

The changing Proteus remained himself through all the 
divagations of his nimble necromancy : 

Turn variae eludent species atque ora ferarum : 
Fiet enim subito sus horridus, atraque tigris, 
Squamosusque draco, et fulva cervice lesena ; 
Aut acrem flammae sonitum dabit, atque ita vinclis 
Excidet, aut in aquas tenues dilapsus obibit. 

Indeed men generally realize that underlying their emo- 
tions, their memory, their cognitions, their desires, their 
corporeal vibrations and alimentations, their vicissitudes of 
hope and despair, their youth and their old age, is something 
which feels, and remembers, and notes, and wishes, some- 
thing which possesses the body and is not body, something 
constant, below experience and accident, and that that some- 
thing is the ne plus ultra of mental analysis, the man himself, 
the cogent persistent raison d'Hre of all the phenomena which 
are its outward manifestations or dress. An incontrovertible 
conviction of its indestructibility, false perhaps, foolish per- 
haps, comes with this other realization, and binds his mind 

* "A System of Logic," John Stuart Mill, Book I., Chap. III. 
2 



1 8 Introduction. 



with the fetters of a tyrannizing expectancy of a life beyond 
the grave. 

Now this sense of Personal Identity has operated widely, 
and in the earliest monitions of man's claim to another life 
has made itself felt as their mainstay and justification. Cer- 
tainly it is natural, and plainly worthy of attention, that it 
should. Grasp for one moment the thought of a Something, 
an Ego which defies scrutiny, and of which all forms of con- 
sciousness are states, and at the same instant you force upon 
your thought of it the necessary attribute of its present 
deathlessness and permanency, which if not the fact, seems at 
least to be your necessary conceptioji of the fact. That it is 
not collocated under phenomena or appearances, which begin 
and decline is inevitable, as it is something which remains 
invariable, and is perpetuated by the stringency of its own 
unclassificableness with such things as are phenomenal. The 
examinations of the prevalence, or evidence of the prevalence, 
of this incentive to belief in a future life, amongst religions, 
follows hereafter. Observe here again, we do not. assert that 
a Sense of Personal Identity proves a future life ; we only 
insist upon its cogency as a means, when recognized, of sug- 
gesting a future life, and as affording provisional grounds for 
a belief in a future life. 

The second effective cause, in our enumeration for the 
belief in the " Life of the World to come " is the " Desire 
for Gratification." In every sense this is unavoidable and 
adequate. Desire may be considered as a chronic condition 
of normal and healthy man; it is the typical expression of our 
species. The restlessness of human nature forces us con- 
tinually out of balance, under the push of desire. Our senses 
perpetually crave satisfaction, our mind unceasingly reiter- 
ates its active inquiry after truth and facts, and a super- 
induced curiosity tempts us to pull aside the curtain of 
futurity or pierce its mists. The man who has no desire has 



Introduction. 19 



no knowledge, and if his body craves no indulgence it is 
either asleep or paralyzed. " Feeling and appetency suppose 
knowledge," says Sir William Hamilton, and a body supposes 
desires. Cogito ergo sum may be given a synonymous alter- 
native in Desidero ergo sum. 

Kant divided the phenomena of mind into three classes, 
the Cognitions, the Feelings, and the Desires or Conations, 
and thus Desire became a signal element in our mental outfit, 
indeed becomes the separative insignia of our eminence, be- 
cause, as Hamilton says : " We can further conceive a being 
possessed of knowledge and feeling alone — a being endowed 
with a power of recognizing objects, of enjoying the exercise, 
and of grieving at the restraint, of his activity — and yet 
devoid of that faculty of voluntary agency — of that conation, 
which is possessed by man. To such a being would belong 
feelings of pain and pleasure, but neither desire nor will 
properly so called." * 

Certainly we can train and manipulate desire, and lower or 
raise the standard of its objects. Desire embraces the widest 
area of human volition, from the unassuaged fevers of lust, 
to the frenetic ecstasies of asceticism and devotion ; and we 
believe these antipodal forms, of course in very different 
measures, with all the intermediate hosts of wishes, have 
here and there the world over prompted men to hope for 
another life. And why ? Because enjoyment is too short- 
lived in a mortal existence, because Desire does not obtain 
its satisfaction in this world, because Desire extends its view 
further than it practically attains to, by the retroactive force 
of disappointment in realization, and by the law of progress- 
ive betterments, and it brings on the imaginative extension 
of this Jife beyond the grave, or the sudden upheaval of gor- 
geous hopes. 

*" Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic," Lect. XL, Sir William 
Hamilton. 



20 Introduction. 



The dream of Philosophy has been the Summum Bonum 
of the race, the detection of that ideal which most completely 
satisfies human aspirations. But the Summum Bonum of the 
race is the generalized expression of the Summa Bona of all 
of its individuals, and the detail of individual hopes, prefer- 
ences, and prayers is as multitudinous as the varying outlines 
of each leaf in the thousands of leaves on one tree. Yet in 
the general aspect of this Desire for Gratification there have 
been naturally promulgated two schools of opinion amongst 
which comprehensively this farrago of miscellaneous wishes 
can be sorted ; the school which makes mere happiness the 
chief end, and the school which makes virtue the chief end. 
The dicta of both are perhaps too narrow, and hardly satisfy 
the contemplative spirit, but at any rate both the Seer and 
the Voluptuary find Desire foiled, and both turn for more 
ample opportunities of satisfaction to another life. 

But James Mill specially affixes the idea of futurity to the 
definition of desire, saying * " desirableness and the idea of 
something pleasurable being convertible terms, the word 
Desire, whenever it is applied to a particular case, carries 
with it a tacit reference to a future time." This, as John 
S. Mill has shown, is not true, yet it is significantly common 
to find our wish for pleasure associated with an expectation 
to enjoy it at a future time, and the agglomerated hopes of 
the race, finally expressed, have rested in another sphere of 
action than this earth. Desire outrunning man's successive 
stations in his movement through life, finally lands his fondest 
and last thoughts beyond life. 

But, to look deeper, the enveloping stimulus of Desire in 
man arouses, in conjunction with a sense of Personal Identity, 
a violent protest against and rejection of annihilation*. The 
human creature mutinies at the threat of extinction and defies 

* " Analysis of the Human Mind," James Mill, Chap. XIX. 



Introduction. 21 



it. * Herein we perceive the full strength of this element in 
shaping man's belief in a future life, and it so penetrates the 
first element — the sense of Personal Identity — that this latter 
derives from it a new validity and it obtains from that an 
intellectual status ; that gives man a brief for his claim to, 
but it — Desire — : furnishes him with eloquence in his plea for, 
a continued existence. Science will naturally deride claims 
resting upon this last ephemeral and baseless ground, 
but "science comes everywhere too late, to meet with a 
thoroughly impartial reception ; it finds already established 
in all quarters that Philosophy of the Feelings which will 
hinder the cause of scientific proof with all the force due to 
the intense mental longing from which it arose." f 

The philosophic relations of these two elements constitut- 
ing the justification of an ethnic recognition of another life, 
are interesting and important. On the one hand we have a 
quasi-intellectual factor, that included or expressed by our 
sense of Personal Identity ; and on the other an emotional 
factor — Desire— radically perhaps cognate with self-love and 
self-seeking, though in its higher forms greatly refined and 
qualitatively transmuted into aspiration and idealization. 
The first conception— Identity — would not practically lead 
men to believe in a future life, though it might be regarded 
as quite adequate to make them think of it, and think well of 
it. The second factor — Desire — the sensationalistic, the sen- 
suous or Cyrenaic, if you will, vitalizes, energizes the previ- 
ous mental apperception and drags it into the current of 
men's daily thoughts. Man wishes for another life ; he 



* Does Spinoza not hint at this when he says (" Ethics," Pt. III., prop. 
ix.), " the mind, both in so far as it has clear and distinct ideas, and also 
in so far as it has confused ideas, endeavors to persist in its being for an 
indefinite period, and of this endeavor it is conscious " ? 

f " Microcosmus." H. Lotze. Introduction. Translated by E. Hamil 
ton and E. E. Constance Jones. 



22 Introduction. 



wishes for it for various reasons : because this life is disap- 
pointing ; because the summum bonum, either in sensation 
or conduct, is not attainable here ; but he wishes it su- 
premely because he loves to live, and then he seizes the 
thought of his indestructible Personality, and the coales- 
cence of his wish for more life, with his assumption of Some- 
thing in him that cannot die, consummate the formation of 
the germinal impulse to the belief in another life. Man's 
desire leaps past the black circuit of Death that invades and 
fastens his temporality, carrying his personal existence over 
the abysmal grave to azure skies and verdant fields beyond, 
and it forces back the legions of destruction by arming its 
poignancy of importunity with the enamel of rational de- 
bate. 

The third factor of this primordial belief is a Moral Judg- 
ment implying the Punishment of Sin and the Reward of 
Virtue. This gives the scope of the idea of a future life a 
theological aspect, though we wish to state plainly that we 
mean by this Moral Judgment a conviction of mind by no 
means limited to a technical recognizance of an individual's 
transgressions in an ethical sense solely. Sin and Virtue are 
often, in aboriginal thought, nothing else but cowardice and 
bravery, and the Moral Judgment then assumes that the 
former will bring its possessor degradation and pain, while 
the latter will crown him with immortal satisfactions. But 
in any case, whether indicative of the rude estimate of fight- 
ing savages as to merit and demerit, or the more intricate 
and perhaps less serviceable ideas of civilization, as to good- 
ness and badness, the theological strain of feeling is awak- 
ened, and the article of a future life becomes associated with 
religions and religious prepossessions. This factor of the 
belief is, perhaps, evolved very early in time, though it is 
logically subsequent to the others. With it the belief is in a 
finished state and sufficiently self-sustained to assume pre- 



Introduction. 23 



rogatives, animate nations, determine conduct, apotheosize 
individuals, people paradise, subjugate fear, embroil sects, 
ravish fancy, and justify revelation. 

The respectable force of this last element — the Moral 
Judgment — to determine the belief in a future life, is evident, 
or made so, on a slight inspection. As Prof. Cocker says : * 
" Every man feels himself to be an accountable being, and he 
is conscious that in wrongdoing he is deserving of blame 
and of punishment. Deep within the soul of the transgres- 
sor is the consciousness that he is a guilty man, and he is 
haunted with the perpetual apprehension of a retribution 
which, like the specter of evil omen, crosses his every path, 
and meets him at every turn ; " and, conversely, every man is 
conscious that in rightdoing he is deserving of praise and of 
reward, and the summation of a life of merit brings to the 
actor and his audience some imaginative prognostications of 
future happiness. Impetus is given to this thought by the 
possibility of a Hereafter, and, vice-versa, the possibility be- 
comes probable through the exciting fears of punishment and 
the animating hopes of reward. The future after death 
gains a veritable credibility when the impulse of conscience 
tells us that neither sin nor virtue is correctly adjudged 
here. 

We have separated and, in a measure, tested the three ele- 
ments which, variously mingled in different men and races, 
have supplied human thought with the notion of a future life. 
We have said that these elements form the substance of that 
notion, and we further assert that however this notion is 
treated, all treatment of it must have reference to these, and 
distribute its suggestions and illustrations around these. 
There are, however, we think, only two ways of treating this 
subject — that of science and that of revelation ; and it is evi- 
dent, at the start, that our system of examination brings 
* " Christianity and Greek Philosophy," B. F. Cocker, p. 122. 



24 Introduction. 



these diverse methods into a comprehensive concomitancy 
which may prove richer in results than has hitherto been 
thought possible. In Analyses I. and II. the details of these 
two treatments are embodied. 

The office of this introduction is to establish the reality of 
our initial assertions in regard to these ultimate components of 
the notion of a future life, and we propose to do so by 
tracing them in some examples of contrasted religions as 
underlying motors to belief, in which study we may also 
obtain some idea of the form and modulus of this belief as 
well. 

It might have been interesting to have hunted out the 
evidences of these ultimate components of credence, in a 
great number of religious cults, but it would have scarcely 
proved more convincing than to establish them in a few. 
The larger task requires more time and space than is advis- 
able to devote to it in an introductory sketch, and could not 
prove more valuable for our purpose than a shorter examina- 
tion of several prominent religions. 

Brahminism, estimated as a product of human thought, is 
certainly one of the most extraordinary and striking spectacles 
this world affords. Judged by the vulgar standards of the 
numerical force of its professors, judged by the antiquity of 
its records, by the beauty of its literary contributions to 
poetry and philosophy, by the fertility of its metaphysical 
invention, by its phantasmagoric display of superstition and 
foulness, nobility and devotion, mysticism and practical piety, 
loftiness of ideals, and pettiness of action, judged by the 
influence it has exerted and the strains of feeling it has per- 
petuated, it will always attract the scholar, the poet, and the 
Christian. 

Like all ethnic faiths it gathers into its diverse manifesta- 
tions the inner being and psychology of the races who reared 
and loved it, the qualities and influences of the terrestrial 



Introduction. 25 



accidents — climate and place — amidst which it sprung, the 
temperaments, sagacity, and styles of the teachers at whose 
hands it grew. " The Hindoo mind is subtle, introversive, 
contemplative. It spins its ideal out of its brain substance, 
and may properly be called cerebral." * The home of the 
Hindoo people, at first perhaps in the elevated regions of 
Central Asia,f where towering peaks print themselves upon 
morning and evening skies, and where broad plains receive 
unchecked the northern or southern winds, was later changed 
to the heated areas of Hindostan, and here, amidst tropical 
luxuriance and enervating airs, that same subtle mind fol- 
lowed the prolific suggestions of philosophic speculation ; 
" the most impressive works of Hindoo genius are modes of 
celebrating the power of meditation. The Rig Veda sings of 
the ' deep sea of mind.' And it has been finely said that the 
name " ' Father of gods and men,' which the Greeks loved to 
give to the ocean, would well apply to India, that immeasur- 
able sea of dogmas and beliefs." (Johnson.) Their writers 
are lost in the immemorial recesses of tradition, or come 
into view at later periods, when schools of analytical phi- 
losophy arose, and commentators and law-givers contributed 
their thinking to the treasuries of its consecrated books. But 
however modified by changes in geographical environment, 
by external influences or individual aberrations, Brahminism 
on the whole retains a unique and incontrovertible expression. 
It was a pantheistic system, and varied in its presentations 
from a coarse material transubstantiation of God in physical 
forms and objects, to an ideal vitalization of Nature by the 
One Mind, whose thought ebbed and flowed like a cosmic 
tide through the myriad channels of life. The Hindoo 

* " Oriental Religions : India," S. Johnson, p. 58. 

f Modern researches seem likely to reverse this generally received view. 
Sayce and German writers are now placing the birthplace of the Indo- 
Europeans in Scandinavia. 



26 Introduction. 



revelled in a " boundless desire to bring the universe under 
one conception, and make it flow forever from Mind as the 
perfect unity and sole reality." Such a religion impeached 
the validity or the justness of personal identity, self-existence, 
individuality. The Hindoo's " very idealism became a per- 
suasion of the nothingness of the individual. . . . Hin- 
doo life, in its twofold aspect, grew more and more like the 
great rivers it dwelt by, in their alternate flood and failure, 
overflow and return. In Thought, a great, broad, still, 
dreamy sea, its bare, motionless face upturned to the sky ; in 
Action, a cooped and stinted stream." (Johnson.) But in 
the Hindoo the Desire for life hereafter comes forward ; he 
cries, " Give me, O Agni, to the great Aditi, that I may again 
behold my father and my mother." Death was "to bring 
them to the homes he had gone before to prepare for them, 
and which could not be taken from them." The mystic sings 
of his spirit : 

"It is not born, nor does it die : it was not produced from any one, nor 
was any produced from it. Eternal and without decay, it is not slain, 
though the body is slain. 

" Thinking the soul as bodiless among bodies, as firm among fleeting 
things, as great and all-pervading, the wise casts off all grief." 

He appeals to Deity saying, " Withhold thy splendors that I may behold 
thy true being. For I am immortal. The same soul that is in thee am I. 
Let my spirit obtain immortality, then let my body be consumed. Remem- 
ber thy actions, remember, O my mind ! Guide, O Agni ! to bliss. O 
God all knowing ! deliver from the crooked path of sin." 

And when we search for the grounds upon which this 
dreaming Hindoo mind, immersed in the nebulosity of 
abstractions, the luminous beauty of an all-enveloping Idea 
of Goodness, of which he himself with the rest of creation is 
part, rests its legitimate claims for another life, we find that 
it is a Sense of Personal Identity. In spite of the unpro- 
pitious surroundings of his philosophic habit, to use the 
words of Mr. Johnson, " he is always more or less haunted 



Introduction. 27 



by the intimation of some highest all-containing presence, in 
the image of that personal identity which all these passions 
and propensities represent." The Hindoo escapes the logi- 
cal inconclusiveness of an extreme pantheistic position by- 
making his identity rest in that of the Supreme Soul. " There 
is nothing," says Mr. Johnson, "of which we read so much in 
this Hindoo thought and worship as Immortality. It is the 
word for final beatitude, for the end of all human aspiration. 
' Whoso is one with the Supreme obtains immortality,' is the 
burden of precept, philosophy, and prayer." Again, "to know 
one's self as one with necessary life was the fact of Immortality, 
and the evidence of the fact, at once." The soul becomes 
the individual, " indestructible, ancient," " not to be dissi- 
pated, not to be seized nor touched," " wise, mindful, always 
pure, subduing the senses, fixed on God, one finds the place 
where fear is not ; the goal, the refuge, the serene Soul : he 
escapes the mouth of death." The Hindoo recognized his 
personal identity, and in reality placed his hopes of another 
life in it; but its dim and melting outlines were contemplated 
below a fluxuous sea of emanations proceeding from the 
Absolute and One. 

The Hindoo felt Desire for this immortal life, as the second 
component of his belief in it. We have seen that in the 
extracts given, and Mr. Johnson affords many other instances 
of their wishes for the future state. 

" There make me immortal, where action is free, and all simple desires 
are fulfilled." (Rig Veda.) 

' ' Go thou home to the fathers, on their ancient paths : lay aside what is 
evil in thee : guarded by Yama from his sharp-eyed sentinels, by right 
ways ascend to the farthest heaven, if thou hast deserved it, and dwell, in 
a shining body, with the gods." (Burial Hymns.) 

" On whatever nature thou meditatest at thy last hour, with desire, to 
that shalt thou go." (Bhagavadgita.) 

" From the unreal lead me to the real ; from darkness to light, from 
death to immortality." (The Mantras.) 

Finally they believed in another world on the ground of a 



28 Introduction. 



moral judgment, that in this world the proper recompense of 
actions is not received, that the misdeeds of evil or narrow 
men are not adequately punished, and the just behavior of 
the best men not consistently rewarded. The idea of punish- 
ment, however, was not vehemently emphasized. The wide 
receptivity and benevolent sympathy of their philosophy and 
its transcendental cast drew a veil of merciful indecision 
over scenes of possible future retribution ; but whenever their 
moral sense was strong and keen enough to appreciate the 
cruelty and injustice of sin, they revolted against it, and 
wrote upon its face — condemnation and punishment, at least 
in this world. 

In the Laws of Manu scholars have found these sentences: 

" The fruit of sin is not immediate, but comes like the harvest in due 
season. Little by little it eradicates the man." 

" Even here below the unjust is not happy, nor he whose wealth comes 
from false witness, nor he who delights in mischief." 

We are told (Johnson) that there were " sanguinary punish- 
ments on the principle of ' eye for eye and tooth for tooth ; ' ' 
that their lawgivers had " an intense abhorrence of the 
crimes they punished. Adulterers must burn on a bed of 
red-hot iron. Thieves were to lose the limbs with which they 
effected the theft." But these ferocious and blind excesses 
had regard to the escape of the victims from future miseries, 
for they held that " men who have committed offences, and 
received from kings the punishment due them, go pure to 
heaven, and become as clear as those who have done well." 
Again we read : 

' ' Let one collect virtue by degrees as the ant builds its nest, that he 
may acquire a companion to the next world. For in his passage thither, 
his virtue only will adhere to him." 

" Single is each man born ; alone he dies, alone receives the reward of 
his doings." 

" Men are ever seeking, never attaining bliss. They die thirsty." 

" Though thy efforts fail, be steadfast, and thou shalt be exalted." 



Introduction. 29 



As Mr. Johnson says, " the sense of immortality is here associated with 
the idea of duty, conceived indeed after a Hindoo fashion." 

When we turn to Persia we meet a religion whose inform- 
ing and creative spirit, its essential and irrevocable mission, 
was the recognition and exaltation of the Individual. Says 
Mr. Johnson, in his studies of Oriental thought,* "that we 
are here met by the spontaneous and child-like poetry of the 
grandly awakening human consciousness of personal Will." 
In this rested their hopes of eternity, the Sense of Personal 
Identity was with them the basis, preeminent and almost 
exclusive, of their belief in immortality. The author above 
quoted continues : f 

" Immortality, in the Avesta, is not involved in transmigration like that 
of Brahminism, nor in nirvana, the Buddhist's refuge from transmigration; 
it does not tend to absorption in Ahura; it does not mingle man with the 
brute, nor merge him with the god. It is distinctly and completely per- 
sonal ; the beginning of that relation to the future which has given 
Christianity its hold upon the Aryan world. All the tragedy, all the 
poetry, which has gathered around the conception of the individual as a 
boundless possibility of good or evil, not in this life only, but for everlast- 
ing existence, has its germ in the religion of Iran." 

He also speaks " of that peculiar sense of dignity and worth 
in the person which enters the historic field with Iranian 
Will j " again, "what attracted Iranian imagination was not 
any fixed form or function, but pure energy of life and 
growth, which, as the substance of personality within, sought 
its own fit outward type in the free element of fire," and 
again, " for the Persian, the individual was the living flame of 
Ahura, in full and pure communion with His purpose, and 
like Him master of the fulness of the fire symbol and its 
power to consume all the evils in the world. Ahura is in- 
deed person, in the fullest sense." All this without being 
exactly the metaphysical Ego is something that involves and 
implies it. 

* "Oriental Religions : Persia," S. Johnson, p. 30. 
t Ibid., p. 66. 



30 Introduction, 



The second element ministering to the maintenance of a 
belief in a future life is Desire, and this is expressed in the 
Persian prayer : 

" Give me knowledge of the better world, of the shining abode ! May 
I reach good reward, and good name, and my soul's bliss." (Johnson, 
"Persia," p. 28.) 

When we look for the evidences of a moral judgment as 
prescriptive of a sense of fitness in the punishment of evil 
and the reward of goodness, they are unmistakable and per- 
vasive. In a religion whose dominating conception was that 
of a prolonged and bitter struggle between the powers of 
good and evil, whose keen analysis of the activities and con- 
sequences of each in the invisible tract of men's spiritual 
natures, expressed itself in drastic determinations of punish- 
ments and compensations, we might confidently predict that 
we would find in it expectations of a future life, as an organic 
necessity as providing a definite time and place for the dis- 
tribution of these. And so we do, involving naturally expres- 
sions relative to conduct and the proper exercise of the Will. 

"Joyously go the pure souls to the golden throne of Ahura and his 
immortal ones." (Yacna.) 

" Through one's own soul he is justified or condemned. A fragment 
from one of the latest writings of the faith, but fully in the spirit of the 
earlier ones, describes the soul of the pure after death as met on its way 
by a sweet wind from the mid-day, in which comes the law of his own 
character, as a beautiful and stately maiden, who declares to him his own 
good words, thoughts, and deeds, and their heavenly rewards, and leads 
him to the divine ford, bestowed at Ahura's own command ; and the soul 
of the wicked, met in like manner by his own law, as an evil odor, which 
brings him to the great darkness without beginning, and the poison from 
Ahriman's hands." (Johnson, " Persia, " pp. 65, 66.) 

Again (ibid n p. 96) : 

" On the Avestan bridge of judgment, the balance hangs poised for all : 
the judges are Mithra, the truth ; Rashnu, eternal righteousness ; and 
Qraasha, perfect obedience ; and the questioning of the soul by itself is 
the last appeal." 



Introduction. 31 



In Confucianism we enter within the influences of dis- 
tinctly ethical culture, the phrases of an austere disciplin- 
arian, and the custom of a polite and self-respecting formal- 
ism. The mystical and indefinite adjurations of Brahminism 
or Buddhism, the fervent symbolism and vehement piety of 
Zoroaster, are not nourished in this mundane soil of present 
interests and daily duties and the pleasing minutiae of cir- 
cumstantial and reverential rites. The family, the home, the 
ancestor, was its religion, and the worshippers became iden- 
tified, as by a chain of supersensual intimacies, with these. 
Certainly the Chinese trusted in the present existence of 
their forefathers, they rendered tribute to them, they wrapped 
the details of domestic life within the shielding shrine of the 
memory of the dead. Mr. Johnson writes : 

"The homage paid by the Chinese to ancestors, then, has elements 
that deserve high respect from believers in continuance beyond death. 
Nature affirms, in these antique, enduring rites of the farthest East, a 
direct communion with the unseen, compared with which the ceremonial 
symbolism of more developed forms of worship seems earthly and trivial. 
How touching, I had almost said how sublime, this simplicity of method 
and means — a bare room, an altar holding fruits and flowers, a memorial 
tablet to the invisible guardian and friend ! So for the Shinto shrines of 
Japan a white screen, a polished mirror, a floral offering, suffice — the pure 
heart, the self-judging conscience, the grateful sense of beauty and of 
life."* 

The fundamental warrant of a belief in a future life is, 
without further support by writings or philosophical disqui- 
sitions, disclosed in this steadfast, this imperishable devotion 
to the dead. It is an instance where the facts of worship re- 
veal this principle of a belief in a future world. The Chinese 
reverence and remember their dead ancestors ; they sur- 
round the lives of the aged with tokens of affection and ven- 
eration ; they invest the altars of the home with miraculous 
potency, because they realize the perpetuity of the person ; 
they — whether dimly or inexpressively, or certainly and with 
* "Oriental Religions : China," S. Johnson, p. 706. 



32 Introduction. 



perspicuity — feel the oneness of the life of the person in 
life, with the person after death ; they are the same, and 
if they are the same, they are so through personal iden- 
tity ; the overmastering instinct may not be specifically 
analyzed, written out to be thumbed over and commented 
on, but it succinctly expresses itself, without advowson, in 
their religious habits and practices. Desire and a Moral 
Judgment are not conspicuously present, and how the Chi- 
nese mind regards the future seems undetermined. The 
belief here, as springing from the three elements we have 
assigned for it, is illustrated in a partially negative and re- 
stricted form, and thereby corroborates the philosophy of our 
analysis. The personality or identity of people is fadingly 
recognized in this worship of ancestors, and to that extent 
introduces the thought of a future life ; but it is not ener- 
getically appropriated, or mystically apprehended and loved. 
So Desire fails to come to the surface with any buoyancy 
and genial persistency, or any ungovernable earnestness. 
And the Moral Judgment fails also to equilibrate the sins 
and goodness of the world in the scales of a future and tran- 
scendental justice, and thereby the belief in a future life itself 
loses intensity and an immediate realism. The Chinese 
doubtless felt desire, and performed an act of judgment rela- 
tive to moral deserts for good or bad deeds, and did appreci- 
ate the fact of personality and personal identity ; but all 
these, the first two as well as the last, are to be sought for in 
that stereotyped and pleasing reverence for the dead whose 
perpetuity seemed enlisted in their thoughts along with the 
fixedness of Nature, as part and parcel of her design. 

Our introductory study has led us far enough for our pur- 
pose, and has been useful in bringing into relief the three 
elements of a Belief in a Future Life, illustrated in three 
diverse religions. The mystic, absorbed in the contemplation 
of a central God whose manifoldness is visibly seen in the 



Introduction, 33 



phases of life and mind, acknowledges them, however eva- 
sively he attempts to hide the individualism which embraces 
all, and is expressed in one of them. The moralist and 
ethical rhapsodist admits them, though Desire is put in the 
background as irrelevant or discordant with those absolute 
sequences which in the nature of God must give more exist- 
ence to the good man and less or none to the bad man. The 
conservatist and domestic pietist feels them, though he may 
not define any of them, in fact may have entirely forgotten 
them in the interminable processes of a cult which originated 
in some ancestral consciousness of their reality. 

These three — a sense of Personal Identity, Desire, and a 
Moral Judgment — compose the substance of our belief in a 
future life ; its modulus is the depth and extent of our wishes 
to secure it, and its modality the shapes our fancies put it 
into. How far we wish it, or what we wish to find in it, are 
of no importance in this inquiry. We turn only this sub- 
stance of our Belief in a Future Life over to Philosophy and 
Science for their inspection, and then, with their conclusions, 
pass to Revelation to learn how far those conclusions under- 
lie, and are conterminous with, its utterances and directions. 
3 



PART I. 



THE ANALYSIS FROM SCIENCE. 



To deny the everlasting persistence of the spiritual element in Man 
is to rob the whole process of its meaning. It goes far toward putting 
us to permanent intellectual confusion, and I do not see that any one 
has as yet alleged, or is even likely to allege, a sufficient reason for our 
accepting so dire an alternative. — (John Fiske.) 



CHAPTER I. 

PERSONAL IDENTITY — THE FACT. 

Science deals with collections of facts, so far as the experi- 
ences of the senses and the results of introspection or analy- 
sis can be called facts, and while it attempts to eliminate 
delusions and fancies, it speculatively arranges facts into 
groups, and suggests or discovers laws which codify and ex- 
plain the groups. The scientific aspect of the question of 
a future life resolves itself into a search for facts proving it 
and of principles warranting it. In this case the auxiliary 
and complimentary position of science towards revelation is 
plain. The facts outside of revelation proving a future life 
are doubtful, and therefore for scientific purposes useless, or 
there are none. The principles, impulses or sequences of 
thought which have made it a prevalent prepossession and 
mental reality we have found to be three. Now Revelation 
supplies absolute dogma, statements hypothetically incontro- 
vertible, not by reason of their credibility but by reason of 
their origin. It does not directly supply principles unless by 
inference and inclusion, but it gives facts and makes asser- 
tions which may be brought into a correspondence with scien- 
tific probabilities, which facts and assertions having an extra 
ordinal veracity de loco ipso, bring at once the scientific possi- 
bilities within the arena of scientific probability, at least to 
the Believer. 

The case in hand illustrates and binds this avowal : 
We have a great variety of facts illustrating a prevalent 
belief in a future life. We have been enabled by our prelimi- 



38 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

nary study (see Introduction) to refer these facts to their 
heads or groups of origination, as springing from a Sense of 
Personal Identity, from Desire, from a Moral Judgment, and 
we are about to show that these groups connate important 
significations in our life and structure. We have thus clearly, 
according to our definition of science, brought this topic — a 
future life — within the limits of scientific study, and we may 
expect, a priori, if science is entitled to deal with it at all, she 
will show herself competent to make some adequate contri- 
butions. Thus, anticipating our results, if science reaches 
some conclusions, let us say theoretically confirmatory of, or 
favorable to this belief, and refers them to the three groups 
repeatedly instanced above, or by a new adjustment brings 
these groups under the ruling of a simpler law, and then 
turning to Revelation as a fons doctrinae purissimae we find 
its statements not only referable to, but absolutely conjunct, 
by inherent propriety, with these same three groups, or the 
resultant simpler law, we have advanced the scientific chance 
to something very near certainty, and we have put to Rev- 
elation on purely secular grounds the valuable underpinning 
of a conformability to philosophic requirements. This is 
our task. 

It is in the first place desirable to fix the fact of our Sense 
of Personal Identity beyond all cavil, and to do so we must 
have recourse to the results of observation, and the reports 
of practised observers, to the students of Mental Science ; 
and though we may expect great divergences of views as to 
the greater or less prominence of this something subadjacent 
to the states of consciousness, or in them, we shall be grati- 
fied if we find a practical unanimity as to a sense of its ex- 
istence. We shall not be disappointed, and as in questions of 
this sort differences of opinion, if radical, are disastrous to 
any further exact inquiry, since one man's assertions can only 
be met by another's, and the danger and the difficulty of 



Personal Identity — the Fact. 39 

arbitrament between them are considerable, this acquiescence 
among metaphysicians and psychologists as a working basis 
is invaluable. The schools of philosophy to which we shall 
repair for an expression of opinion we have, for convenience, 
arranged into six classes : 

First, the School of Popular Impressions represented by 
Reid, Stewart, and McCosh with the modified academy of 
sesqui-popular impressions, the party of philosophical fusion- 
ists, represented by Sir W. Hamilton. Second, the School 
of Dialectics represented by the Schoolmen, notably St. 
Thomas Aquinas, with their classic exemplar Aristotle. 
Third, the School of the Empiricists and Utilitarians, the 
so-called party of Sensationalism, represented by Hobbes, 
Locke, Hume, Brown, Mill (father and son). Fourth, the 
School of Transcendentalists, Idealists, embracing many 
tribes, represented by Descartes, Berkeley, Spinoza, Kant, 
Leibnitz, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, under the 
classic paternity of Plato. Fifth, the School of Physiologi- 
cal Psychology and Corporal Metaphysics represented by 
Bain, Spencer, Lewes. Sixth, the School of the Eclectics 
represented by Cousin. 

Thomas Reid represents in philosophy the protest of the 

common mind against any system of thought which tacitly 

rejects its simple affirmations, or discloses with suspicion 

their doubtful aspects. He believed in the actuality of the 

external world as it appealed to all our senses, and weighted 

their evidence with all the dignity and impressiveness of a 

co-ordination foreordained by God for the purpose of such 

belief. Of Reid Dr. McCosh says :* 

" He has the truly philosophic spirit : seeking truth modestly, humbly, 
diligently ; piercing beneath the surface to gaze on the true nature of 
things ; and not to be caught by sophistry or misled by plausible repre- 
sentations." 

* V Scottish Philosophy," p. 192. 



40 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

On this question of Personal Identity, Dr. Reid's utterances 
are distinctly affirmative. "It appears," he says, 

" then, to be an undeniable fact, that from thought or sensation, all 
mankind, constantly and invariably, from the first dawning of reflection 
do infer a power or faculty of thinking, and a permanent being or mind 
to which that faculty belongs ; and that we as invariably ascribe all the 
various kinds of sensations and thought we are conscious of to one indi- 
vidual mind or self." * 

This he calls a " judgment of nature," viz., a " judgment 
not got by comparing ideas, and perceiving agreements and 
disagreements, but immediately inspired by our constitu- 
tion. " f 

Dugald Stewart followed in the wake of Reid, imparting to 
the Scotch School an unexpected elegance of diction, a wider 
range of reading, and the prestige of a re-statement of its 
views. He says, Consciousness 

" denotes the immediate knowledge which the mind has of its sensations 
and thoughts, and in general of all its present operations. 

" Of all the present operations of the mind, Consciousness is an insep- 
arable concomitant. 

" From Consciousness and Memory we acquire the notion and are 
impressed with a conviction of our own personal identity." % 

It is to this last paragraph that Dr. McCosh refers when 
he says that Dugald Stewart held that "we are not, properly 
speaking, conscious of self or the existence of self : we are 
conscious merely of a sensation or some other quality, 
which by a subsequent suggesting of the understanding leads 
to a belief in that which exercises the quality." In whatever 
way recognized, its final emergence into thought is unequiv- 
ocally announced by this writer. 

Dr. McCosh himself bears the most downright, almost 
defiant testimony, for the truth of our Personal Identity. He 

* " Inquiry into the Human Mind," Chap. II., Sec. 7. Thos. Reid. 
f .Ibid % " Outlines of Moral Philosophy." Dugald Stuart. 



Personal Identity — the Fact. 41 

says : * " Personality is the self of which we are conscious in 
every mental act. Personal Identity is the sameness of the 
conscious self as perceived at different times ; and," he con- 
tinues, " the phrases do not point to some unknown essence 
apart from or behind the known thing. They simply desig- 
nate an essential, an abiding element of the thing known. 
As the personality and personal identity appear, we are enti- 
tled to insist that they be brought out to view, and expressed 
in every proper science of psychology ; " and again he un- 
compromisingly asserts that " in all consciousness I have a 
knowledge of self as a person ; in all remembrance, a recol- 
lection of self as a person ; and in the comparison of the two 
a perception of their identity." 

Turning to Sir William Hamilton, a towering and majestic 
figure amongst the phalanxes of modern thinkers, we find his 
biographer assigning his position and merits in these words : f 

" In moral spirit Hamilton was allied to Reid, not to Hume, and he 
followed in the line of the earlier Scottish thought as represented by 
Reid. . . . Hamilton boldly grappled with the highest questions of 
Philosophy regarding our knowledge of being — Infinite and Absolute 
Reality. . . . The influence of Kant both upon the cast of his 
thought and his philosophic phraseology, is marked enough. In point of 
positive doctrine, however, the two men in Germany he most nearly ap- 
proached were Jacobi and G. E, Schulze. . . . This reading and 
training in other schools widened his conceptions of the problems of phi- 
losophy, and disclosed to him points of view and relations among those 
problems unnoticed in the homespun thinking Scotland that went before 
him." 

That Hamilton admitted our Personal Identity, the quota- 
tion made of his views in the Introduction (p. 16) clearly 
proved, but as a complementary statement instinctively 
teaching his opinion as to its origin and relations we select 
the following : J 

* "Defence of Fundamental Truth." lames McCosh. 

f " Blackwood's Philosophical Classics." Hamilton I. Veitch, p. 25. 

% a Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic ; Metaphysics. " Lect. XL 



42 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

" The fifth undeniable condition of consciousness is memory. This 
condition also is a corollary of the third. For without memory our 
mental states could not be held fast, compared, distinguished from each 
other, and referred to self. Without memory, each indivisible, each infi- 
nitesimal moment in the mental succession would stand isolated from 
every other, — would constitute, in fact, a separate existence. The no- 
tion of the ego or self, arises from the recognized permanence and iden- 
tity of the thinking subject in contrast to the recognized succession 
and variety of its modification. But this recognition is possible only 
through memory. The notion of self is, therefore, the result of memory. 
But the notion of self is involved in consciousness; so, consequently, 
is memory/' 

The extraordinary powers of analysis and verbal paralo- 
gism which served to decoy their possessors into networks of 
formal definition have made the work of the schoolmen the 
consternation and despair of moderns, and brought down 
upon it the most unfavorable and uncomplimentary reflec- 
tions. We read of the " mire of scholasticism," of its " mani- 
fold inextricable labyrinths of error and dispute," and this 
abuse has roused a vigorous champion in Mr. Thomas Harper, 
who in his " Metaphysics of the School " endeavors to set 
their claims, at least those of the angelic Doctor (St. Thomas 
Aquinas), as philosophical expounders in a more pleasing light, 
and struggles to translate their abstruse and almost unintelli- 
gible distinctions into something approaching comprehensibil- 
ity. From him we have obtained the extracts given here, as 
certainly without such a director we would have been unable 
to approach these dry and painstaking anatomists of terms. 
From him we learn that the schoolmen declared " that, the 
entity by which actual Essence is constituted is identical 
with the existence of that Essence," and " whereas actual 
Essence is an act and completely constituted in its own proper 
Entity outside its causes," therefore there can be " between 
actual Essence and its Existence no real distinction, but only 
a logical distinction founded on a reality ; " and therefore, 
arguing on their preestablished lines, and imputing to them 



Personal Identity — the Fact. 43 

a conclusion their rules warranted, Self and the Identity of 
Self are indistinguishable as facts ; and as Self is self -cog- 
nized, its Identity assumes the same authenticity, while it 
presents the conception of Self under the new aspect of con- 
tinuity. 

Aristotle undoubtedly fully recognized Personal Identity, 
but he made it depend upon a correlation of Soul and Body : 
" The soul is not any variety of body, but it cannot be without 
a body : it is not a body, but it is something belonging to or 
related to a body ; and for this reason it is in a body, and in 
a body of such or such potentialities." * Aristotle gives to 
the soul various functions, and denominates the nutrient, the 
sentient, the cogitant soul, of which the last, the noils, is " the 
highest of all forms — the Form of Forms — the mental or sub- 
jective aspect of all formal reality. " It thinks, reasons, con- 
cludes, and is separable from the body; and finally, wherein 
the admission we are after seems to lie, " it is an aggregate 
of noumena, all of them in nature identical with itself ; " and 
while cogitating them, the Nous at the same time cogitates 
itself. 

The schools of sensation revert to the impressions of the 
senses as the source of all knowledge. They find our contact 
with the outside world a physical and an unintermittent 
stream of sensation, and they assign to these sensible impacts 
and the consequent cerebration they produce the origin of 
ideas, which are subsequently combined and compared, and 
with the accumulation of experience in a lifetime, or by 
heredity in the course of ages, classified and denned. In no 
way are the characteristics of this school more conspicuously 
exhibited than in their treatment of axiomatic truths. These 
truths which the philosophy of Kant referred to a priori 
intuitions, awakened from mental dormancy upon the first 

* Grote's " Aristotle " : Bain and Robertson. Vol. II., p. 188, et seq. 



44 Man's Belief in Immortality. 

sensible propulsion to thought administered by our seeing, or 
feeling, or hearing, etc.,, are called by J. S. Mill "experi- 
mental truths ; generalizations from observation " (" Logic," 
Pt. II., Chap. 5), and later on, the words of a reviewer of Dr. 
Whewell's works, quoted with approbation, clearly define this 
point of view. He says axiomatic truth forces itself upon the 
mind 

"by daily and hourly experience, including always, be it observed, in 
our notion of experience, that which is gained by contemplation of the 
inward picture which the mind forms to itself in any proposed case, or 
which it arbitrarily selects as an example — such picture, in virtue of the 
extreme simplicity of these primary relations, being called up by the 
imagination, with as much vividness and clearness as could be done by 
any external impression, which is the only meaning we can attach to the 
word intuition, as applied to such relations." 

In Thomas Hobbes we find the first authoritative English 
presentation of these views, and from him we must now 
receive an answer to the inquiry we have started. 

It is difficult or impossible — or has been for us — to find in 
Hobbes any very explicit statement of his views upon this 
question precisely as we put it ; but it is not impossible to 
find very definite indications of his acknowledgment of some 
natural groundwork, concrete and durable, constituting a 
person, and representing a receptive organism consciously 
the same at all moments of its existence. For these indica- 
tions we refer to his Essay on Human Nature, wherein he 
says that " according to the two principal parts of man I 
divide his faculties into two sorts — faculties of the body, and 
faculties of the mind ; " " of the powers of the mind there be 
two sorts, cognitive, imaginative, or conceptive and motive ; " 
and of the cognitive he says : " We must remember and 
acknowledge that there be in our minds continually certain 
images or conceptions of the things without us, insomuch 
that if a man could be alive, and all the rest of the world 
annihilated, he should nevertheless retain the image thereof, 



Personal Identity — the Fact, 45 

and all those things which he had before seen or perceived 
in it ; every one by his own experience knowing that the absence 
or destruction of things once imagined doth not cause the 
absence or destructio?i of the imagination thereof." 

This, without going further, concedes the assumption of a 
subject realizing its continuity through the very act of recall- 
ing its previous apperceptions, for a man's identity, to quote 
words used in an anonymous essay,* " we shall find to consist 
in nothing more than his becoming sensible at different 
times of what he had thought or done before : and being as 
fully convinced that he then thought or did it, as he now is 
of his present thoughts, acts, or existence." Indeed in his 
definition of Reminiscence (same treatise) we find the iden- 
tical existence of Self in time announced. He says: " There is 
yet another kind of discussion beginning with the appetite to 
recover something lost proceeding from the present backward, 
from thought of the place where we miss at to the thought of 
the place from whence we came last ; and from the thought 
of that to the thought of a place before, till we have in our 
mind some place, wherein we had the thing we miss ; and 
this is called reminiscence ; " similarly in his definitions of 
experience and of ratiocination the persistence of self-con- 
sciousness is implicated. Perhaps we cannot expect to derive 
from Hobbes a philosophically just conception of Personal 
Identity, inasmuch as to him " the one great and fundamental 
fact of mind is sensation : which is nothing more or less than 
the effect of material objects around us, exerted by means of 
pressure or impact upon that material organization which we 
term the mind," f but we have no hesitation in assuming his 
recognition of such a fact, however much it may have lacked 
in his works persistent and salient definition. 

* " A Defence of Mr. Locke's Opinion concerning Personal Identity." 
f " Speculative Philosophy of Europe in the Nineteenth Century." J. 
D. Morell. 



46 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

Locke, " the most candid of philosophers, and one whose 
speculations bear on every subject the strongest marks of 
having been wrought out from the materials of his own 
mind," * has unquestioningly accepted the rulings of a primal 
instinct as to our Personal Identity. He says : f " Since the 
mind, in all its thoughts and reasonings, hath no other imme- 
diate object but its own ideas, which it alone does or can 
contemplate, it is evident that our knowledge is only conver- 
sant about them." And again, in the same place : " It is the 
first act of the mind, when it has any sentiments or ideas at 
all, to perceive its ideas ; and, so far as it perceives them, to 
know each what it is, and thereby also to perceive their dif- 
ference, and that one is not another." And in a note defend- 
ing himself against the Bishop of Worcester of the charge of 
having destroyed the efficacy of the current proof of an im- 
material spirit, derived from the very act of thinking itself, 
he says, "first we experiment in ourselves thinking. The 
idea of this action or mode of thinking is inconsistent with 
the idea of self-subsistence, and therefore has a necessary 
connection with a support or subject of inhesion : the idea of 
that support is what we call substance : and so from thinking 
experimented in us, we have a proof of a thinking substance in 
us which in my sense is a spirit," and that the "thinking 
substance " realizes its identity to-day with the same sub- 
stance of yesterday, or predicts irrefutably its identity with 
the same substance two years from to-day, seems fully de- 
clared when he elsewhere speaks of the property which 
makes men "sensible that they are the same." More ex- 
plicitly he says (Chap. IX.) : " As for our existence, we per- 
ceive it so plainly, and so certainly, that it neither needs nor 
is capable of any proof. ... In every act of sensation, 
reasoning, or thinking, we are conscious to ourselves of our 

* J. S. Mill in " System of Logic." 

f " Essay on Human Understanding." Locke, Book IV., Chap. I. 



Personal Identity — the Fact. 47 

own being ; and, in this matter, come not short of the high- 
est degree of certainty." And speaking of memory, he says : 
" And thus we have knowledge of the past existence of sev- 
eral things, whereof our senses having informed us, our memo- 
ries still retain the ideas ; and of this we are past all doubt, 
so long as we remember well." But, quoting from Prof. 
Green, we have his confession in this matter still more con- 
vincingly emphasized : * 

" Experience convinces us that we have an intuitive knowledge of our 
own existence. ... If I know I feel pain, it is evident I have as cer- 
tain perception of my own existence as of the pain I feel. If I know I 
doubt, I have as certain perception of the existence of the thing doubting 
as of that thought which I call doubt." 

Turning to Hume, we may anticipate the exhibition of his 
cherished scepticism appearing in his treatment of this sub- 
ject, and we may also expect just here to see it assume its 
most uncompromising resistance. Yet, permeated as his ways 
of thinking were with the most concentrated alkali of nega- 
tion, we shall have reason to rejoice in finding that this mod- 
ern Pyrrho cannot altogether extricate himself from the fatal 
prepossession, at least, of some sort of a self-existence. The 
subject is treated especially in his Treatise of " Human Na- 
ture," f and is certainly a piece as well of admirable rhetoric 
as it is of subtle and ingenious ratiocination made possible 
by a delusive philosophy. 

The best we can do with Hume is to extract from his 
statements a confession of the forcible impression we have of 
self-identity, and observe how this irrepressible conviction, 
or, as he would say, delusion, compels him to exert the finest 
art of his brilliant and evasive logic to escape its suffocating 
consequences. By the dicta of his philosophy Hume could 

*" Philosophical Works," T. H. Green, Vol. I., p. 122 ; extract from 
Locke, Book IV., Chap, ix., sec. 3. 

fPart IV., Section VI. : Personal Identity. 



48 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

not accept the conception of Personal Identity without cast- 
ing to the winds his whole system of ideas referrible to im- 
pressions, and impressions referrible to the unknown; but the 
ingrained congenital force of the conviction remains, and the 
philosopher, to free himself of its despotism, undertakes the 
task of reasoning away his own natural impressions. And 
here he is both logical and wise. 

Hume, after quoting, in his half-disdainful, and yet courte- 
ous manner, the opinions of " some philosophers " that " we 
are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our 
self," says : 

" Unluckily all these positive assertions are contrary to that very expe- 
rience which is pleaded for them ; nor have we any idea of self, after the 
manner it is here explained. For from what impression could this idea be 
derived ? This question it is impossible to answer without a manifest con- 
tradiction and absurdity ; and yet it is a question which must necessarily 
be answered if we would have the idea of self pass for clear and intelli- 
gible. It must be some one impression that gives rise to every real idea. 
But self or person is not any one impression, but that to which our several 
impressions and ideas are supposed to have a reference. If any impres- 
sion gives rise to the idea of self, that impression must continue invariably 
the same through the whole course of our lives, since self is supposed to 
exist after that manner. But there is no impression constant and invari- 
able. Pain and pleasure, grief and joy, passions and sensations, succeed 
each other, and never all exist at the same time. It cannot, therefore, be 
from any of these impressions, or from any other, that the idea of self is 
derived ; and, consequently, there is no such idea." 

Or rather there should not be. But there is ; and Hume pro- 
ceeds to suppress this intractable fiction, appealing, with 
characteristic audacity, and, we believe, a self -convinced fair- 
ness, to his own experience, saying : " For my part, when I 
enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stum- 
ble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, 
light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can 
catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can 
observe anything but the perception." We do not indeed 



Personal Identity — the Fact. 49 

observe our Personal Identity, but we are conscious of it in 
every act of perceiving ; it is the temporal coincident of 
thought. 

Our author continues: " What then gives us so great a pro- 
pension to ascribe an identity to these successive perceptions, 
and to suppose ourselves possessed of an invariable and un- 
interrupted existence through the whole course of our lives ? " 
After touching upon the identity of inanimate and animate 
things, which is also a delusion, inasmuch as a series of sen- 
sible impressions produced by the same object may be con- 
sidered as " several different objects existing in succession, 
and connected together by a close relation," which " affords 
as perfect a notion of diversity as if there was no manner of 
relation among the objects," he says: " The relation facilitates 
the transition of the mind from one object to another, and 
renders its passage as smooth as if it contemplated one con- 
tinued object. This resemblance is the cause of the confu- 
sion and mistake, and makes us substitute the notion of iden- 
tity, instead of that of related objects." 

But he continues : 

" Our last resource is to yield to it and boldly assert that these differ- 
ent related objects are in effect the same, however interrupted and varia- 
ble. In order to justify to ourselves this absurdity we often feign some 
new and unintelligible principle that connects the objects together, and 
prevents their interruption or variation. Thus we feign the continued 
existence of the perceptions of our senses, to remove the interruption; 
and run into the notion of a soul, and self, and substance, to disguise the 
variation. But, we may further observe that when we do not give to 
such a fiction, our propension to confound identity with relation is so 
great, that we are apt to imagine something unknown and mysterious 
connecting the parts beside their relation ; and this I take to be the case 
with regard to the identity we ascribe to plants and vegetables." * 

Our author now lays violent hands upon " the nature of 
Personal Identity," asserting that as " the understanding 

* See Introduction, p. n. 



50 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

never observes any real connection among objects, and that 
even the union of cause and effect, when strictly examined, 
resolves itself into customary associations of ideas," that 
" thence it evidently follows, that identity is nothing really 
belonging to these different perceptions and uniting them to- 
gether, but is merely a quality which we attribute to them, 
because of the union of their idea in the imagination when 
we reflect upon them." Truly, as Dr. McCosh says, when 
Berkeley took away the substratum of matter, the Avenger 
came and removed the basis of mind.* 

Now the three relations of contiguity, resemblance and 
causation only, according to Hume, give union to ideas, and 
upon such indissoluble union as they can forge must depend 
the fate of this persistent unit of consciousness. The rela- 
tion of contiguity is at once abandoned as useless, but in 
resemblance we find the clue. As the memory is a faculty by 
which we raise up the images of past perceptions, and "as 
an image necessarily resembles its object, must not the fre- 
quent placings of these resembling perceptions in the chain 
of thought convey the imagination more easily from one link 
to another and make the whole seem like the continuance of 
one object ? In this particular, then, the memory not only 
discovers the identity, but also contributes to its produc- 
tion by producing the relation of resemblance among the 
perceptions." 

As to causation, the true idea of the mind is a system of 
different perceptions or different existences which are linked 
together by the relation of cause and effect ; " and as the 
same individual republic may not only change its members, 
but also its laws and constitutions ; in like manner the same 
person may vary his character and disposition, as well as his 
impressions and ideas, without losing his identity. Whatever 

* Prof. T. H. Green, in his " Philosophical Works,", calls Hume 
" Berkeley's logical result." 



Personal Identity — the Fact. 51 

changes he endures, his several parts are still connected by 
the relation of causation." 

"As memory alone acquaints us with the continuance and extent of 
this succession of perceptions, it is to be considered, upon that account 
chiefly, as the source of personal identity." " In this view, therefore, 
memory does not so much produce as discover personal identity by show- 
ing us the relation of cause and effect among our different perceptions." 
" Identity depends on the relations of ideas : and these relations produce 
identity, by means of that easy transition they occasion. But as the rela- 
tions, and the easiness of the transition, may diminish by insensible 
degrees, we have no just standard by which we can decide any dispute 
concerning the time when they acquire or lose a title to the name of 
identity." 

So concludes this incomparable writer, whose style and 
thoughts are always delightful, revealing force and polish, 
enlivened by a generous and eager fancy, accompanied by a 
certain courtliness of self-restraint and by a facile humor, 
anon changing to scorn that gleams like the flash of a silver 
fin seen in the pellucidity of running waters. 

David Hume denies Personal Identity, but he does not 
deny our Sense of Personal Identity ; he simply impugns its 
veracity, but his language permits us to establish it, from 
those very assertions he has so industriously compiled for 
its refutation. The argument is thoroughly given by Profes- 
sor Green, and we use his expressive and vigorous rejoinder.* 

" That thus, though they may occur in a perpetual flux of succession — 
every turn of the eyes in their sockets, as Hume truly says, giving a new 
one — yet, just as far as they are qualified by likeness or unlikeness to each 
other, they must be taken out of that succession by something which is 
not itself in it, but is indivisibly present to every moment of it. This 
we may call soul, or mind, or what we will. ... In short, any such 
modification of Hume's doctrine of the singleness and successiveness of 
impressions as will entitle us to speak of their carrying with them, though 
single and successive, the consciousness of their resemblance to each other, 
will also entitle us to speak of their carrying with them a reference to that 
which is not itself any single impression, but is permanent throughout the 

* " Philosophical Works." T. H. Green. Vol. I. Pp. 176. 



52 Man's Belief in Immortality. 

impressions : and the whole ground of Hume's polemic against the idea 
of self or spirit is removed." 

The system of Dr. Thomas Brown was one of sensation, 
and while not of authoritative importance or distinction/^ 
se, exercised important influences, was combated by Hamilton, 
and admired by the Mills. Dr. Brown, in his " Lectures on 
the Philosophy of the Human Mind," consumes three lectures 
in his discussion of Mental Identity, the whole intent of 
which is to fasten its actuality by a comprehensive argument, 
and to secure its firmest anchorage by the exhibition and 
repulse of those views which deny it. A very absolute ex- 
pression of his opinion, which could not very well be made 
stronger, we select (Lecture XIII.) : 

1 ' If there be, as it has been already shown that there must be, intuitive 
truths ; and, if we are not to reject, but only to weigh cautiously, the 
belief which seems to us intuitive, it will be difficult to find any which 
has a better claim to this distinction than the faith which we have in our 
identity, as one continued sentient and thinking being, or rather, to speak 
more accurately, as one permanent being, capable of many varieties of 
sensation and thought. 

" There is to be found in it every circumstance which can be required to 
substantiate it as a law of intuitive belief. It is universal, irresistible, 
immediate." 

In James Mill's " Analysis of the Human Mind " we find an 
interesting chapter (Chap. XIV., Sec. 7) treating identity — 
an excerpt from which is given in a foot-note in our Intro- 
duction, page 9. The evidence of Personal Identity to 
Mill is Memory, and evidence and belief here are the same 
thing ; the serial train of states I observe in other men I 
believe to have been observable in myself ; and as I call that 
objective series the same man from beginning to end, I do 
the same of my own series, and believe myself the same 
through all its extent or duration. 

" The mode of knowing the successive states of my own consciousness, 
and of those of other men, is totally different ; and in this consists the 
peculiarity which appears to belong to the idea which I annex to the term 



Personal Identity — the Fact. 53 

I or myself. The knowledge of my own states of consciousness is con- 
sciousness itself, for the present moment, and memory of that conscious- 
ness for all the past." 

The views of his son, John Stuart Mill, could not be more' 
appropriately displayed than by the quotation of a part of his 
comment on these remarks of his father. " My personal 
identity," he writes, 

"consists in my being the same Ego who did, or who felt, some specific 
fact recalled to me by memory. So be it : but what is Memory ? . . . . 
This succession of feelings which I call my memory of the past, is that 
by which I distinguish my Self. My Self is the person who had that series 
of feelings, and I know nothing of myself, by direct knowledge, except 
that I had them. But there is a bond of some sort among all the parts of 
the series, which makes me say that they were feelings of a person who 
was the same person throughout, and a different person from those who 
had any of the parallel successions of feelings ; and this bond, to me, 
constitutes my Ego. Here, I think, the question must rest, until some 
psychologist succeeds better than any one has yet done in showing a mode 
in which the analysis can be carried further." 

Passing to the camp of the Idealists — who seem like men 
engaged in the labors of Sisyphus and the Dardanidae rolling 
stones of learning to the tops of hills of speculation, to be 
perpetually rolled back again, or emptying in sieves of sym- 
metrical figures the boundless ocean of reality — we encounter 
and must interrogate the immortal Plato. 

The characteristic assumption of his psychology, the pre- 
existence of the individual's soul involves ipso facto its iden- 
tity, and if so its sense of such identity. To be sure the 
conception " embraces everything living, and is common to 
animals (if not to plants) as well as to men : and the 
metempsychosis — or transition of souls not merely from one 
human body to another, but also from the human to the 
animal body, and vice versa — is a portion of the Platonic 
creed." * But we have (Int. p. 9) expressly insisted that 
Personal Identity coheres to that grade of identity which 

* Grote's " Plato, " 2d ed., Vol. II., p. 191. 



54 Man's Belief in Immortality. 

remains unchanged "through a serial prolongation of states; " 
and the multifarious pilgrimages of the soul as conceived by- 
Plato does not militate against our claim that Plato must 
have acknowledged the soul's realization of its substa?itia idem 
in altera throughout its modified incorporations. 

Rev. George Berkeley, the prototype of modern idealism, 
says on this subject : * 

" But besides all that endless variety of ideas or subjects of knowledge, 
there is likewise something which knows or perceives them, and exercises 
divers operations, as willing, imagining, remembering about them. This 
perceiving active being is what I call mind, spirit, soul, or myself ; by 
which words I do not denote any one of my ideas, but a thing entirely 
distinct from them, wherein they exist, or, which is the same thing, whereby 
they are perceived — for the existence of an idea consists in being per- 
ceived." 

In Emmanuel Kant we meet a mind gifted with great pow- 
ers of internal introspection and capital energy. To him all 
modern thought is indebted for having established funda- 
mental points of reference and assertion in his " synthetic 
cognitions a priori" so that, instead of swimming on a tide 
of scepticism between shores of phenomena, we are shown 
stars in the firmament of being by which we find our place 
and steer our course over the wilds of speculation. 

Kant's language and meanings are not so readily compre- 
hended, and the depth or the obscurity of his definitions and 
words conceals to us his precise thought. Yet he did recog- 
nize self-consciousness in a very absolute and imperative 
manner, and introduced it as the durable and inseparable 
element of all cognitive processes. He says : f 

4 ' The ' I think ' must accompany all my ideas (Vorstellungen), as other- 
wise something in me would be represented (vorgestellt) which could not 
at all be thought, which is equivalent to saying that the idea was either 
impossible, or at least impossible for me. Likewise all the manifoldness 
of the perceiving (anschauung) offers a necessary relation to the ' I think ' 

* " The Principles of Human Knowledge," Part I., § 2. 
\ '• Kritik der reinen Vernunft," § 16. 



Personal Identity — the Fact. 55 

in the same subject in which this manifoldness is encountered. But this 
idea (Vorstellung) is an act of spontaneity, i. e. , it can only be regarded 
as referrible to sensation. I call it the pure apperception, to separate it 
from the empirical or the original apperception, as it is that self-conscious- 
ness which, while it brings into prominence the idea of the ' I think,' 
must accompany all other, and in all consciousness is one and the same, 
and can be further accompanied by nothing else. I call also the unity of 
the same the transcendental Unity of Self-Consciousness, in order to indi- 
cate the possibility of the Cognition a priori by it. " 

Prof. Fischer, commenting on this, says : * 

"The identity of representations differing in time necessarily presup- 
poses the identity of consciousness, that is to say, a consciousness which, 
in all changes of time and impressions, always remains unchangeably the 
same. If at every moment I become a different person, then two repre- 
sentations which I have at different moments can never be the same. 
This unchangeable consciousness, as distinguished from the variable, is 
called pure." 

Dr. Wallace, reproducing Kant's notion, writes : f 

" Thus the final ground which serves to unify the elements occurring 
in sense-perception, is the unity of consciousness, and that not a passive 
receptacle, but an active reference of one element to another, and the 
further unification of the particulars by a synthetic act. The ' I think ' 
which silently accompanies and animates each state of conscious life, con- 
fronts every fresh item of experience which we gather with the accumu- 
lated store of past knowledge." 

As we pass to Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, we 
seem to be entering thick clouds of metaphysical obstruction 
here and there lit by flashes of divination revealing the mar- 
vels of the mind in wonderful array. Our steps, unhelped 
by the genial illumination of ordinary impressions, vaguely 
move through aisles of singular architecture whose rising 
flights only impress us with a sense of some approaching 
splendor, while a phantasmagoric luminousness is thrown 
about, bringing ourselves into grotesque and colossal relief. 

* " Fischer on Kant's Critik." Mahaffy, p. 83. 

f "Blackwood's Phil. Classics : Kant," p. 170. Wallace. 



56 Man's Belief in Immortality. 

The liquid but troubled depths of mental analysis with these 
authors amaze and bewilder us, and though we derive a sort 
of inspirational flush of exaltation, as though we gazed on 
elemental truth, we are feign to reconsider our enthusiasm 
and assign its incoherent exhilaration to cerebral vertigo. 
We turn from their sesquipedalia and mystical laws and ver- 
bal inebriation, and as through the window pane the clear 
limits of external nature, luminous and soft, fall on our eyes, 
we feel, with Horatio, that " these are but wild and whirling 
words." Yet at times the German philosophers afford us 
sudden glances into truth, and carry us with an irresisti- 
ble and soaring impetus through the interstellar spaces of 
abstract thought. 

The school of Fichte has been described by his biog- 
rapher, Adamson, in these words : * 

" From adherence to the idea of the transcendental method — determi- 
nation to accept nothing, whether as fact, law, or notion, which is not 
deducible from self-consciousness and its necessary conditions — such is the 
spirit of the Fichtean philosophy, and from it follows the demand for a 
systematic unity of conception, for a single principle out of which the 
multiplicity of experience may be deduced, and therefore for a single, all- 
embracing philosophical science." 

Fichte, in his own words, rests his whole speculative fabric 
upon the basis of a self-conscious Ego which is not meant to 
be the same thing as individuality, " but the identity of the 
conscious subject with that of which it is conscious." 

"It is the ground of individuality, for without it there could not pos- 
sibly be the developed, concrete consciousness of personality ; but, as 
ground, it is distinct from that which is conditioned by it." (Ibid.) 

From this pure Ego, or Ich-heit, we rise to the completed 
self-consciousness, which "would mean not simply the ab- 
stract moment of self-identity, but the consciousness, to 
which the individual may arrive, that he occupies a place in 

* " Blackwood's Phil. Classics: Fichte," p. 148. R. Adamson. 



Personal Identity — the Fact, 57 

an ideal system of conscious beings, in an ideal order." 
{Ibid) Fichte deals with the Ego as the idea of all reality 
itself, and evolves all thought, cognition, spiritual relations, 
by its introactive development of different forms of itself. 
Identity enters at every point, and the Personal Identity of 
you or me appears when the Ego, fixing itself within certain 
spatial relations and comprehensible corporal limits, becomes 
differentiated under the cognomen and cloak of individuality. 
The antithesis of non-Ego is brought into limiting arrange- 
ments with the Ego under various categories until the syn- 
thesis of mind and matter, as we should regard them, is 
made up. 

" And so the whole nature of finite rational beings is comprehended 
and explained. Original idea of our absolute being, which is first given 
through the opposing principle, a non-Ego, or generally through our fini- 
tude ; self-consciousness, and, in particular, consciousness of our practical 
striving ; determinations of our representations thereby (with freedom and 
without freedom), through this, determination of our actions — the direc- 
tion of -our real, sensuous existence ; continual extension of the limits to 
our activity." {Ibid., p. 178.) 

Hegel, whose metaphysical activity seemed something 
akin to mental disease, so singular and wayward and utterly 
incomprehensible appear his dicta to ordinary readers, made 
the most profound excavations into the super-sensible aspect 
of nature, and left a mass of systematized material as the prod- 
uct of his elaborate labor, using as his first implement of 
exploration the assumption of self, Ego, consciousness, which 
he asserted with portentous emphasis and made the primary 
organism of intellectual generation. Hegel's ego, self, is a 
vast unorganized spirituality that is recognized as a necessary 
abstraction, but pertains to the absolute, and absorbs all 
phenomena and underlies them ; it is an indispensable of 
thought and an inseparable of all appearances. It under- 
goes a kind of process of gemmation or nucleal segmenta- 



58 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

tions ; it becomes a duad, " the units of which confront each 
other in the forms of Ego, subject, and Ego, object." 
The process of self-consciousness follows : 

' ' The intermedium is the first step in the divine process (the phase of 
universality, latent potentiality being first assumed) ; it is reflection into its 
own self, and as such only, and no more, it is the awakening of conscious- 
ness, the kindling, the lighting, the flashing up of the Ego, which is pure 
negativity as yet. First the Ego was only in or at itself, everywhere in 
general and nowhere in particular, that is, latent only ; potential only 
(the formless infinite, indefinite nebula); then comes reflection of this 
into itself or on to itself, and this reflection is a sort of medium, an ele- 
ment of union, a principle of connection between self and self. In 
this stage the previously Indefinite comes to be for itself ; that is to say 
in the physical world it is finite, circumscribed individual, entity, and in 
the metaphysical a self-consciousness ." * 

Everything in Hegel is placed at supreme distances from 
mortal habits of language and conception ; his loci swim in 
pure space, and the fabric of his mental cosmos seems a 
web of endless cerebrations, spun in unseen, unmeasured 
regions of reverie. But he did recognize Personal Identity 
clearly, and throws into it a characteristic intensity of sub- 
terranean meaning. Here at least the feet of his Daedalian 
speculations seem to touch the earth : 

" Till self-consciousness acts, no one can have the notion I — no one 
can be an I. In other words, no one knows himself an I, feels him- 
self an I, names himself an I, is an I, until there be an act of self- 
consciousness. In the very first act of self-consciousness then, the I 
emerges, the I is born, and before that it simply was not. But self-con- 
sciousness is just the I, self-consciousness can be set identical with the I ; 
the I, therefore, as product of self-consciousness, is product of the I itself. 
The I is self-create then. I start into existence, come into life, on the very 
first act of self-consciousness, I then am the product of my own act, of 
my own self-consciousness. Of course I am not to figure my body and 
concrete personality here, but simply the fact that without self-conscious- 
ness nothing can be an I to itself, and with the very first act of self-con- 
sciousness I begins." f 

* " The Secret of Hegel." J. H. Stirling. Vol. L, p. 78. 
f Ibid., p. 130. 



Personal Identity — the Fact. 59 

The gist of the Schopenhauer system of Philosophy was the 
relativity of subject and object, the dependence of both he 
who sees and the thing seen upon their structural reciproca- 
tion. The system asserts the existence of two elements, mind 
and world, only because these two elements have an indisso- 
luble connection. Destroy the connection and neither re- 
mains. 

The connection only presupposes both, and both presup- 
pose the connection. This ring of thought in which we run 
round a ceaseless repetition seems rather a juggle or a clever 
paralogism to create or excuse scepticism, than a sincere effort 
to determine the real position of men as observant and neces- 
sary, instructed and hoping beings. Schopenhauer regarded 
the world as the interaction of object and subject, the play 
of mental images arising from the relation of that which sees 
and that which is seen, though the latter has no objective 
actuality. All phenomena of the world, all movements, spe- 
cialties, individuals and creatures are ideas, a presentation to 
the subject having no residence outside of it being the detail 
of its own activity. But the " thing that is " is the Will, not 
especially yours or mine, but the impersonal abstract philo- 
sophic entity that maintains indeed an individualized repre- 
sentation in us, but objectified in the universe underlies, per- 
petuates all by its ceaseless and regular permutation of itself 
into the subject and object, into the flux of animal existences 
and forces, the dance of seasons, the light of sky, the rota- 
tion of worlds, the tragedy and humor of life. The Will is 
the impersonal universal substance perpetually personified 
and limited. We as individuals are the spray of a wave 
projected for an instant into a separate objectivity and con- 
sciousness, only to fall back again and re-dissolve upon the 
surface of the cosmic tide. 

He says :* 

* " The World as Idea." Translated by R. B. Haldame and J. Kemp. 



60 Man's Belief in Immortality. 

" So then the world as idea, the only aspect in which we can consider 
it at present, has two fundamental, necessary and inseparable halves. 
The one half is the object, the forms of which are space and time, and 
through these multiplicity. The other half is the subject, which is not in 
space and time, for it is present, entire and undivided, in every percipient 
being, so that any one percipient being with the object constitutes the 
whole world as idea, just as fully as the existing millions could do ; but 
if this one were to disappear, then the whole world as idea would cease 
to be." 

Our bodies are our objectified will, and hence by a wider 
implication everything is. 

" Phenomenal existence is idea and nothing more. All idea, of what- 
ever kind it may be, all object is phenomenal existence, but the will alone 
is a thing in itself. As such it is throughout not idea but toto genere 
different from it ; it is that of which all idea, all object, is the phenomenal 
appearance, the visibility, the objectification. It is the inmost nature, the 
kernel of every particular thing and also of the whole. It appears in 
every blind force of nature and also in the preconsidered action of man ; 
and the great difference between these two is merely in the degree of the 
manifestation, not in the nature of what manifests itself." {Ibid.) 

In making the Will the basis of all knowledge, Schopen- 
hauer involves the recognition of consciousness, of self-con- 
sciousness, and Personal Identity in his system. As he says : 
" The concept Will, on the other hand, is, of all possible con- 
cepts, the only one which has its source not in the phenomenal, 
not in the mere idea of perception, but comes from within, 
and proceeds from the most immediate consciousness of each 
of us, in which each of us knows his own individuality accord- 
ing to its nature, immediately, apart from all form even that 
of subject and object, and which, at the same time, is this 
individuality, for here the subject and the object of knowledge 
are one." {Ibid.) Indeed this concession is by no means 
ample or at all correspondent to the assumptions made by 
prevalent philosophic opinion. 

"It is true," says Schopenhauer, "we see the individual 
come into being and pass away ; but the individual is only 



Personal Identity-— the Fact. 61 

phenomenal," whereas, "the multiplicity of things in space 
and time, which collectively constitute the objectification of 
will, does not affect the will itself which remains indivisible 
notwithstanding." In a chapter "On the pure subject of 
Knowledge" he says: "I remind the reader that our con- 
sciousness has two sides ; partly it is a consciousness of our 
own selves which is the will ; partly a consciousness of other 
things, and as such primarily, knowledge, through perception, 
of the external world, the apprehension of objects. Now 
the more one side of the whole consciousness comes to the 
front, the more the other side withdraws. Accordingly the 
consciousness of other things, thus knowledge of perception 
becomes more perfect, i. e., the more objective, the less we are 
conscious of ourselves at the time ; " and in another place he 
says : " On the other hand, in the individual alone lies the 
immediate consciousness : accordingly it imagines itself differ- 
ent from the species, and therefore fears death." 

The Personal Identity prefigured in this philosophy is real 
enough, but it is evanescent ; it is with Schopenhauer only a 
state of mind, permanent during the life of the individual, 
but even then rising and falling with fluctuating intensity, as 
we regard ourselves or turn our attention elsewhere. As the 
individual with Schopenhauer could have no personal exist- 
ence after death, Personal Identity became the coefficient of 
a vanishing quantity. Personal Identity represented a prin- 
ciple of our mental organization, inevitable and constant, but 
dissipating, as far as its concrete realization is concerned, 
with the destruction of our material frame. 

Schelling held very striking views as to Absolute Being, 
and expressed them in strains of rhapsodical sublimation. It 
is difficult to see always what he means, though undoubtedly 
a noble sentiment and a lofty religious mysticism animated his 
abstruse sentences, while much of his writing on this subject 
is intelligible, and wonderfully suggestive, giving the reader 



62 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

a sort of contagious throb of fierce assent. In an essay- 
entitled " On the I as a Principle of Philosophy," or about 
the Unconditioned in human knowledge, he displays the 
various consequences of his unlimited and omnipotent con- 
ceptions of the I. He there states the existence of the /, 
free, untrammelled, unconditioned, the base and condition of 
all knowledge, the cynosure of observation, the fulcrum of 
all effort, the one undecomposable self-sufficient passive focus 
of all thought, the unsupported pedestal of all ideas, the 
pullulous origin of all thinking, nay the very natura naturans 
of the manifold externalities of life. But this I is the essence 
of a supreme Absolute Identity, a theurge, whose emanation 
first as an excurrent wave has made the world of sense, and 
as a refluent wave, back to its source, has made the world of 
mind. We exist, but our existence is maintained by, as it 
were, umbilical connections of mental force with the primal 
principle. According to Schelling, writes Morell, " every 
mind is the image or reflection of the eternal mind ; every 
individual reason the exemplar of the infinite reason ; and 
therefore by gazing inwardly upon the development of our 
own minds, we may learn the principle or process by which 
everything else is developed likewise." 

" I am," exclaims Schelling in a sort of idolatrous jubila- 
tion; " my eye contains a Being that precedes all thought and 
presentation. It is, inasmuch as it is thought, and it is 
thought so long as it is ; therefore it only so far is, and 
only so far is thought, as it thinks itself. Also it is, in so far 
as it alone thinks itself, and it alone thinks itself while it 
is. By thought it involves itself out of absolute causality." 
(Werke.) This may sound like empty rigmarole, but in the 
next chapter we may find occasion to approve its hidden 
force. At any rate Schelling perceived our Sense of Per- 
sonal Identity, though our individuality was only a differen- 
tiated part of the central Absolute Being. 



Personal Identity — the Fact. 63 

Of Spinoza's system Froude has eloquently written : * 

"Nothing exists except substance, the attributes under which sub- 
stance is expressed, and the modes or affections of those attributes. 
There is but one substance self-existent, eternal, necessary, and that is 
the absolutely Infinite all-perfect Being. Substance cannot produce sub- 
stance, and therefore there is no such thing as creation ; and everything 
which exists is either an attribute of God, or an affection of some attri- 
bute of Him, modified in this manner or in that. Beyond Him there is 
nothing, and nothing like Him or equal to Him ; He therefore alone in 
Himself is absolutely free, uninfluenced by anything, for nothing is ex- 
cept Himself ; and from Him and from His supreme power, essence, intel- 
ligence (for these words mean the same thing), all things have necessarily 
flowed, and will and must flow forever, in the same manner as from the 
nature of a triangle it follows, and has followed, and will follow from 
eternity to eternity, that the angles of it are equal to two right angles." 

As Spinoza advocated and formulated a most expanded 
and uncompromising system of pantheism, the separateness 
or atomicity of mind was not fully insisted upon, and we do 
not discover that the Sense of Personal Identity was defined 
if allowed, each individual being but a limited segment of 
the Panurge and cognizant of itself only as part of that. 
" God is not only the cause of things in respect to their being 
made but also in respect to their being " (" Ethics," Part II., 
Prop. X. note — ); and he says (Axioms I.), " the essence of 
man does not involve necessary existence, that is, it may, in 
the order of nature, come to pass that this or that man does 
or does not exist." 

But the sense of identity is indicated in this statement, " if 
a man knows anything, he by that very fact knows that he 
knows that he knows it" (" Ethics," Part II., Prop. XVI.; 
note — ), and again, " the human mind has ideas from which 
it perceives itself and its own body, and external bodies, 
as actually existing " (" Ethics," Part II., Prop. XLVIL).f 

* " Short Studies on Great Subjects." Spinoza : J. A. Froude. 
f Bohn's " Philosophical Library." Works of Spinoza, translated by R. 
H. M. Elwes. 



64 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

It is really difficult to extract from Spinoza's works any- 
very useful definition of the Sense of Personal Identity, 
and yet, surveying his philosophy in toto, some sort of self- 
consciousness seems logically educible from it, while such 
phrases as we have quoted, if not equivocally taken, imply it. 
Our identity becomes, so to speak, a representative identity 
reflecting the absolute identity of God whose objectively 
located ideas we are. While we all are in a manner the 
expressed Deity, each expression denies, by a sort of micro- 
cosmic reiteration of, and efficacious sympathy with, its ori- 
gin, a sense of its existence as perpetuated under the same 
forms yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow. The implication 
may seem ludicrous, and yet in that sublimated sphere of 
thinking which Spinoza occupied it may possess a sort of 
transcendental aptness, viz., that an idea realizes itself and 
itself persistent. Certainly Spinoza recognized that he had 
to reckon with this Sense of Identity in man, whether or no 
he would admit its implications. (See Chap. II.) 

Descartes, whose spontaneous rejection of the scholastic 
regimen of ideas led him into a wholesale expulsion of all 
previous convictions, started anew with the affirmations and 
their deductions of consciousness. " I resolved, " he says, 
" to reject as absolutely false everything which was subject 
even to the smallest doubt. . . . Does anything remain ? 
Yes ! thought : this very doubt and denial exist only so far 
as they are thought. . . . The reality of the thought 
involves the existence of the thinker. . . . Thought is 
known because both knowledge and scepticism are thought. 
And my personal existence is at once the type of all reality, 
and the measure of all certainty." * 

Explaining the philosophy of Leibnitz, his biographer says :f 

* " Modern Philosophy," Descartes. F. Bo wen. 

f " Blackwood's Philosophical Classics : Leibnitz." John Theodore 
Meiz, p. 161. 



Personal Identity — the Fact. 6$ 

" Our unconscious self which slumbers in the darkness of 
memory represents the night ; our sensuous knowledge or our 
perceptions represent twilight ; our clear thoughts represent 
daylight." The mingled sentiment, imaginative mechanism, 
moralistic beauties and mathematical definition which make 
up Leibnitz's philosophy were applied rather to the sum of 
things than to the special problems of philosophy, and form a 
sort of cosmological fancy or fiction, enclosing a great deal 
of truth, very pleasing and very noble, but scarcely realiza- 
ble or substantial. Not that he did not contribute in all 
directions to human instruction, equipped as he was with the 
whole panoply of knowledge, but that his system is less defi- 
nitely a technical discussion of mind per se, than a wonderful 
organ of melodious power uttering the music of the spheres. 
But Leibnitz was compelled to recognize Personal Identity, 
at least in a diffused if not intimate sense. He was a ration- 
alist, rejected empiricism, turned to his mind for the admoni- 
tions and guidance of truth. 

"Thought," he said, "is to the soul what motion is to the 
body. A soul absolutely without thought, and a body abso- 
lutely without motion, appear to me equally contrary to nature, 
and without example in the world." * This implies identity 
and personal identity, if the analogy is rigidly interpreted, 
and he does say as quoted by Prof. Bowen that " unconscious 
perceptions also mark and constitute the individuality of each 
person, through the traces which they preserve of his former 
states as connected with his present being." 

Coming to the successful and reigning school of physiolog- 
ical psychology and intellectics, we encounter the perspicu- 
ous and admirable statements of Alexander Bain whose force, 
honesty and scientific training make him its best exponent. 
Dr. Bain says : f 

* " Modern Philosophy." F. Bowen. 
f " The Senses of the Intellect," 2d edit., p. 381. 
5 



66 Maris Belief in Immortality. 

" The totality of our mental life is made up of two kinds of conscious- 
ness — the object consciousness and the subject consciousness. The first 
is our external world, our non-ego, the second is our ego, or mind proper. 
Berkeley confounded these two : he merged the object consciousness, 
determined by our feelings of expanded energy in the subject conscious- 
ness, determined by passive feelings and ideas. It is quite true that the 
object consciousness which we call Externality, is still a mode of self in 
the most comprehensive sense, but not in the usual restricted sense of 
' self ' and ' mind ' which are names for the subject to the exclusion of the 
object." 

" So often as I open my eyes I have the sensation of light. I there- 
upon associate this sensation with this action, and I expect in all future 
time that the action will lead to the sensation." {Ibid., p. 384.) 

" The sentiens, or the mind that feels, is one portion of the totality of 
our being ; the sensum, the thing felt, is the alternative or contrasting por- 
tion of our being, the attitude of putting forth actual energy." {Ibid., p. 

385.) 

" I, the subject, may be at times an object ; I may make my own men- 
tal states, my passive feelings, and my successions of thought a matter of 
study and consideration, as in the investigations of mental science. Prop- 
erly speaking, at that moment I am all subject ; I have withdrawn myself 
so completely from the cognition of the object world, that no part of me is 
then an object in the chief acceptation of object, the non ego, or the ex- 
tended material world. But within the subject sphere, in which I exclu- 
sively am for the time, I might be said to be divided into two parts, 
the recollections of my feelings or states, which I am studying, and the 
act of studying them ; the one, the facts studied, is, in a certain sense, 
an object ; the other, the effort of studying, is the subject. So, when 
engrossed in remembering, I am all subject, since what I remember is 
some idea or ideas, and my act of remembering is also called a part of my 
Ego or self." 

Personal Identity is implied here as an essential predicate 
without which these phrases become absurd or meaning- 
less. 

In Herbert Spencer we have an industrious thinker, a dili- 
gent scrutinizer of states of feeling, of the temperature and 
modality of feeling, one who has organized groups and ag- 
gregates and congeries of feelings out of simple sensations, 
has combined and compared and thrown them into multi- 
form complications of interaction under the ordinance of a 



Personal Identity — the Fact. 6j 

few laws, who has attempted to work up nervous shocks, 
distributed over and through our nervous system, as we have 
it, into cognitions, and emotions, and desires, one who has 
laid the foundations, probably in a great measure rightly, of 
his philosophy upon the material basis of life. 

He has attempted to extract from sense and sensation 
with the guidance of physical science an intelligible inter- 
pretation of ourselves and our position in the world within 
such limits as he firmly declares circumscribe all inquiry. 
And while he seems to have accumulated an extraordinary 
mass of evidence as to the evolution of body and mind, he 
has pulled down the curtain on all sides of us within what 
we had previously regarded as the limitary circuit of knowl- 
edge. He has written a prohibitory statute against further 
tampering with the question of How is Knowledge possi- 
ble ? He has seemed to wish to choke off all our incoherent 
remonstrances by building up an edifice of terms and plicated 
and reduplicated harmonies of terms so fair and lofty, so 
spacious and devious, so bewilderingly furnished with the 
treasures of thought and observation, that we shall never 
wish to wander beyond its walls or busy ourselves less use- 
fully than to admire its marvels. Like the guests of Aladdin, 
we shall banish all expectation of passing beyond its portals, 
though its windows look out on Nowhere, or even trespass so 
rudely upon the hospitality of our host as to ask him for any 
assurance of its stability. True Prof. Green assures us that 
the " primary question of metaphysics still lies at its thresh- 
old, and is finding nothing but a tautological or preposter- 
ous answer," and that there is a difference ''between the 
metaphysic which, because it understands the distinctive na- 
ture of its problem, does not seek the solution of it from the 
sciences which themselves form the problem to be solved, 
and that which, unaware of its own office, though unable 
to discard it, interpolates itself into the sciences and then 



68 Man's Belief in Immortality. 

extracts from them, under the guise of a scientific theory of 
mental phenomena, what are after all but the first thoughts 
of metaphysic clothing themselves in a new set of mechanical 
or physiological metaphors." 

In his " First Principles " Spencer coherently admits our 
Sense of Personal Identity, though he takes it to be an ele- 
mental puzzle, indeed a sort of necessary apodictical contra- 
diction and innuendo. He says : * 

"Belief in the reality of self is, indeed, a belief which no hypothesis 
enables us to escape. . . . But now, unavoidable as is this belief — 
established though it is, not only by the assent of mankind at large, 
indorsed by divers philosophers, but by the suicide of the sceptical 
argument — it is yet a belief admitting of no justification by reason ; nay, 
indeed, it is a belief which reason, when pressed for a distinct answer, 
rejects. ... So that the personality of which each is conscious, and 
of which the existence is to each a fact, beyond all others the most certain, 
is yet a thing which cannot truly be known at all : by the very nature of 
thought." 

Spencer elsewhere suggests the form of this personality : f 

" Thus the totality of my consciousness is divisible into a faint aggregate 
which I call my mind, a special part of the vivid aggregate cohering with 
this in various ways, which I call my body ; and the rest of the vivid 
aggregate which has no such coherence with the faint aggregate. This 
special part of the vivid aggregate which I call my body, proves to be a 
part through which the rest of the vivid aggregate works changes in the 
faint, and through which the faint works certain changes in the vivid." % 

Passing by Lewes, we come to Cousin, the sensible and 
discreet French eclectic, and in his " Cours de Philosophic," 
Introduction Generate, we find these words : " We do not 
begin by looking up ourselves, for this would presuppose that 
we knew we already existed ; but some day, hour, instant, a 



* " First Principles," § 20. 
f " Principles of Psychology," § 462. 

% In Chapter IV., conclusions partially interchangeable with this are 
reached. 



Personal Identity — the Fact. 69 

solemn moment in life, without search we find ourselves ; 
thought in its instinctive development shows us that we are ; 
we affirm ourselves with profound security, with a security- 
untroubled by any negation; " and in another place (18th 
Lesson) he asks, " Is the idea of Personal Identity imma- 
nent in the human understanding or not ? How would you 
respond : is there any amongst you who doubts his personal 
identity, who doubts that he is the same to-day that he was 
yesterday or that he will be to-morrow ? If none doubt their 
personal identity, it remains to inquire whence originates the 
idea." We may find Cousin's speculations on this point 
useful in the succeeding chapter. 

So we have passed up and down through the benches of 
the philosophers, and the answers we have received from 
these patient thinkers have been various and wise. One 
alone (Hume) has ventured to question the reality of Per- 
sonal Identity, and his denial implied his realization of its 
pertinacious self-assertion in human thought, while it involved 
itself disastrously in an admission of it in some way after all. 
Spinoza and Schopenhauer admitted it, in a relative and chi- 
merical fashion ; Fichte, and Hegel, and Schelling attached 
it to loftier generalizations of thought; the rest assented and 
either vehemently insisted on it or gave it an oblique approval 
which, however dissatisfying, was a significant exponent of 
the reality of our impressions of it. 

We think we are justified in claiming that scientifically we 
have established the fact of a Sense of Personal Identity. 
We have used a legitimate method and we think the question 
is not outside of scientific determination. It may be objected 
that we have only the opinions of philosophers, and that they 
are not all agreed about it. Whose opinions, then, should we 
ask for, and why are not philosophers scientific inquirers, and 
in what sense are their opinions and their differences of 
opinion on this matter separable from opinions and differ- 



jo Man's Belief in Immortality. 

ences of opinion in regard to the age of the gorge of the 
Yosemite, the correct theory of light, or the source of meteor- 
ites ? If there are facts to be observed in these latter cases, 
which are verifiable by sense, and this objective method * is 
so admirable for giving us correct results, why is there not 
an absolute agreement ? Because the facts are not all ascer- 
tainable, or what are, are not identically interpreted, and so 
conjecture must supplant observation, but there is in reality 
no fatal controversy, and the important positions are all 
admitted. True, and are there no facts in consciousness, and 
if there should be divergences of views as to what they mean, 
are those divergences more perilous when there is also here 
a substantial agreement, than discrepancies as wide and dis- 
parate in acknowledged physical questions, under the same 
circumstances ? The material of experience naturally falls 
under the scrutiny of scientific study, and experience, ac- 
cording to Lewes, " is the sum of the actions of Objects on 
Consciousness ; or — to word it differently — the sum of the 
modifications which arise from the relations of the Sensitive 
Organism and its environment. In this sum are included — 
ist, the direct affections of Consciousness in its relations to 
the outer world ; 2d, the results of those affections through 
the action of Consciousness in combining, classifying, and 
transforming the materials furnished by Sense. Thus Experi- 
ence, in its widest acceptation, is the product of two factors : 
Sensation, and Laws of Consciousness. " 

The phenomena of thought, the processes, the condition of 
thinking are experience, and become the subject of, are 
appropriate matter for, scientific observation. 

* "The Objective Method (of Search), which moulds its conceptions on 
realities by closely following the movements of the objects as they sever- 
ally present themselves to Sense, so that the movements of Thought may 
synchronize with the movements of things." "Hist, of Phil.," Prolego- 
mena, p. 33, G. H. Lewes. 



Personal Identity — the Fact. 71 

And to whom shall we turn as qualified investigators, if 
not to those who, by temperament, study, discipline, and 
earnestness of intention, have prepared themselves for the 
most arduous tasks and tests of mental analysis. The simple 
and rational custom of all men can suffer no violent reversal 
in this case, and we see no reason in this question for con- 
sulting doctors who may be able to delineate the brain areas, 
or anthropologists who can measure its skull-casing. We 
adopt the human and profitable habit of getting our informa- 
tion where it is best supplied. And if verification is insisted 
on, we shall submit to the tests suggested by Lewes with 
really more confidence of a result than those physicists who, 
on the one hand, assert light to be a substance, and on the 
other, a series of oscillations or waves ; or than those who 
say meteorites came from the sun, as against others who aver 
they are remnants of dismembered planets or dust dropped 
from the tail of a comet ; or than geologists who regard the 
canon of the Yosemite as due to aqueous erosion as opposed 
to theorists of its partially seismic origin. Says Lewes (Pro- 
legomena : "Hist, of Phil."), "only two ways : the real test 
and the ideal test. The first is a reduction of the inference 
to a sensation. The second is a reduction of the inference 
to a necessity of thought. Both are reductions to identical 
or equivalent propositions which render their negatives 
unthinkable." 

Personal Identity is a " necessity of thought" if a group of 
eminent thinkers, in other respects widely separated, conclude 
that their own thinking requires it, and its necessity could 
not be more remarkably illustrated, for as Locke, writing to 
the Bishop of Worcester, says: "I could look into nobody's 
understanding but my own to see how it wrought, but I think 
the intellectual faculties are made and operate alike in most 
men." 

The Sense of Personal Identity seems a permanently or 



J2 Maris Belief in Immortality. 

thoroughly established feeling, and, as Hume wrote, in 
another matter, " Nor ought we to despise it because of 
the simplicity of its appearance ; " its implications treated 
in the next chapter may surprise us with hidden conse- 
quences. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE SENSE OF PERSONAL IDENTITY ITS IMPLICATIONS. 

We were careful, when indicating the three natural insti- 
gations in human nature which prompted men, ab initio, to 
expect a future life and to willingly accede to such promises 
of it as came to them in a more authoritative manner in the 
religions of the world, that whatever scientific weight these 
instigations might claim, it would all be in the way of ren- 
dering the belief respectable and possibly probable. We 
have nowhere nourished the thought that science offered any 
actual evidence, or that experience supplied any. And this 
apologetic and wavering position of science we have marked 
by considering the Sense of Personal Identity, not the Per- 
sonal Identity itself, as the first primordial instinct, or, as we 
shall endeavor to show, the one ultimate incitement to this 
belief, formulating in itself two others, Desire and a Moral 
Judgment. Now, evidently, the assumption of a Personal 
Identity, whatever we may mean by that, underlies and is 
presupposed by any sense of such identity ; but that the sci- 
entific analysis here given may be exempted from even the 
most distant appearance of a religious plea, with which it 
should have and can have nothing to do, we shall, from the 
outset, build the considerations and logically adduced impli- 
cations arising from any such fact as Personal Identity, not 
upon it, but upon our Sense of it. This puts the whole series 
of statements herein embraced, with all attendant cogita- 
tions, elucidations, and briefs, upon a problematic basis, /. e., 
whether our Sense of Personal Identity can be trusted as 



74 Man's Belief in Immortality. 

implying a fact, or not. We have, therefore, adopted the 
widest latitude of liberality, and however evidently this book 
may indicate our own personal convictions or hopes, in this 
section at least we shall be austerely judicial. Impugn or 
disprove the validity of our Sense of Personal Identity as an 
illusionary impression of a nonentity, and we think science 
fails to render it probable that there is such a thing as a fut- 
ure life, and the various implications noted here are useless 
for the elaboration of that probability. 

But, on the other hand, allow that Sense a permissive 
existence only, as a symptom of the reality it implies, and 
the probability is rendered respectable under the limitations 
we have here denned. Even then the somewhat gratuitous 
character of this analysis is apparent, as a probability is 
valueless in proof of anything actually, and the more value- 
less as its percentage of strength is insignificant as compared 
with the utter lack of any confirmatory evidence in the way 
of facts to establish the subject of the probability itself, as, 
in this question, ghostly existences, spirits, disembodied 
minds, or transferred vitalities. 

But if the probability, for reasons determined by individ- 
ual temperament or education, is acceptable, the Christian 
thinker will be tempted to examine its supporting frame- 
work of ideas ; and if he finds the same framework, archi- 
tecturally, as it were, re-presented in revelation, he will 
regard the agreement as something more interesting than a 
coincidence, and more valuable, perhaps, than any merely 
positive or meagre testimony. 

We have reviewed the wide and widely distributed con- 
, elusions and statements of philosophy as to the existence of 
. a Sense of Identity, and we must distinctly confess that the 
gsense is persistently present everywhere, and therefore in 
,(^very one, and extorts a universality of acknowledgment 
^ujte unmistakable and very impressive. We now engage in 



The Sense of Personal Identity. 75 

the less simple work of finding out the implications of this 
Sense, and we already discern far and elusive boundaries of 
thought. 

In the first place such a Sense implies (we speak always on 
the basis accepted implicitly throughout this Analysis, and 
explained in the preceding pages) an Identity and the power 
of its recognition by the Subject of whom it is predicated. If 
Newton realized that he was the author of the " Principia " 
in 1686, and the same person who, in 1704, wrote the 
" Optics," then his Sense of Personal Identity thus mani- 
fested implied that whatever made up, as a person or indi- 
vidual, the author of the " Principia," also made up the 
author of the " Optics," and that Newton, as that aggregate 
of characteristics and mentalities, also possessed the power of 
asserting, at least to his own satisfaction, that this was so. 
In other words, Self-Consciousness and Personal Identity are 
necessitated logically in our Sense of the latter. Personal 
Identity is perceived, and Consciousness is the percipient. 
But Self-Consciousness must include Consciousness in all its 
applications, as Self-Consciousness is itself only a particular 
state of the general faculty. And now taking Consciousness 
first as a very common term in philosophy, so generally de- 
fined and so compositely illustrated as to need little more or 
any explanation, we will refer to it under its forms rather 
than attempt to seize its nature ; we will review, by naming 
them, its several grades, consciousness of sensations, con- 
sciousness of emotions, consciousness of determinations, 
inclinations, volitions, consciousness of connections, com- 
parisons, conclusions, notions, fancies, images, viz., con- 
sciousness of thought in its entirety. 

That our Sense of Personal Identity implies conscious- 
ness generally, seems scarcely to need corroboration from 
the authority of philosophers, some of whom make conscious- 
ness and identity one ; but that our steps may be advanta- 



y6 Man's Belief in Immortality. 

geously protected we will adduce some opinions on this sub- 
ject. It cannot prove fatiguing, but will instruct us by sug- 
gestion. Dr. McCosh says : * 

"I am sure no components which did not contain self could give us 
self. Surely our perception of self could not be given by mere sensations, 
that is, by sensations in which self is not mixed up. We are as conscious 
of the self as of the sensation, and the sensation could as little give us the 
self as the self could give the sensation. It should not be forgotten that 
this self appears in all our other mental exercises, thus showing that it is 
more essential than our very sensations ; it is found in our memories, 
beliefs, imaginations, judgments, emotions and volitions. We are conscious 
of these not separately or as abstracts ; but of self as remembering, self as 
believing, self as imagining, self as judging, self as under feeling, self as 
willing." 

Now as Self-Consciousness is only a Sense of Personal 
Identity, the latter manifestly gives us Consciousness in its 
widest scope, for our consciousness of our thoughts, emotions 
or volitions is invariably accompanied by a consciousness of 
Self as the subject of these, and, vice versa, the consciousness 
of Self involves the recognition of thought, emotion and vo- 
lition as its possible states, Dugald Stewart says : " From 
Consciousness and Memory we acquire the notion, and are 
impressed with a conviction, of our personal identity." 
Hume says : " Were all my perceptions removed by death, 
and I could neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate 
after the dissolution of my body, I should be entirely annihi- 
lated, nor do I conceive what is further requisite to make me 
a perfect non-entity." As consciousness and only conscious- 
ness properly is the percipient of thought, or love, or hate, 
or sight, as so, that to say I am in any of these conditions, I 
must be conscious that I am in them ; then to become a 
" non-entity " according to Hume, which means with us a 
loss of identity — a solution of the individual into nothing or 
everything — we must surrender consciousness, therefore cun- 

*" Defence of Fundamental Truth." J. McCosh, p. 90. 



The Sense of Personal Identity. yj 

sciousness is implied in Personal Identity. Kant held that 
" self -consciousness always implies consciousness of some- 
thing else than self, and could not exist without it." Fichte 
says : " If the Ego be not reflective, it cannot be conscious of 
itself ; it remains a thing, and not an Ego," and, if reflective, 
it apprehends not only itself, but reviews its sensations, emo- 
tions, thought, or, in other words, summons in an auxiliary 
capacity consciousness to record its own affections, or, as 
Fichte strenuously held, is itself consciousness doing that 
very thing. 

Descartes affirms that, " by the very first act of conscious- 
ness therefore, the me takes possession of, and affirms itself." 
Victor Cousin says : " It is consciousness and memory which 
presuppose personal identity," and that " we cannot be con- 
scious of, or remember any phenomenon whatever without 
at the same instant having a rational conviction of our iden- 
tical existence." 

But the dependence is radically intimated at once by a 
simple inspection. All our consciousness must have reference 
to a subject or it is not consciousness, and under all its 
applications and reports subsists the tacit confession of a 
conscious self, without which consciousness deprived of its 
inherent causality disappears. But if by an antecedent 
affirmation we assert a Sense of Personal Identity, the self 
thus set up becomes the focus of consciousness and recipro- 
cally predicts it. 

The succession of logical inferences is unbroken and in- 
exorable. A Sense of Personal Identity which we assume, 
and with excellent reason (Chap. I.) compels us, ipso facto, 
to admit Self-Consciousness, and Self-Consciousness involves 
the whole reportorial activities of consciousness in its diver- 
sity of relations. If consciousness is thus included in the 
connotations of a Sense of Personal Identity, the inclusions 
of consciousness, by a narrower embracement, must be also 



yS Man's Belief in Immortality. 

enlisted in it, and by this incorporation a line of connection 
is opened between Personal Identity and the objects of con- 
sciousness ; and those were enumerated to be sensations, 
inclinations, volitions, emotions, and thought. 

Now the obvious implication of consciousness, so neces- 
sary as to be almost idle to mention, is Mind, for con- 
sciousness is but a function of mentality, for as Prof. J. F. 
Ferrier says : " Along with whatever any intelligence knows 
it must as the ground or condition of knowledge have some 
cognizance of itself." The operations of the mind evoke the 
retroactive force of consciousness to record and review them, 
and this awakens the sense of personal existence as the 
structural quantity of which both are exponents, or as the 
principle maintaining each as modifications of its own 
essence, or as an attribute of itself. " Thinking is inconceiv- 
able without a person to think," Descartes urges,* and again, 
as interpreted by Prof. Morell, f " you think, and what does 
thinking include ? Manifestly a subject and an object — a 
thinking being and thought itself." 

Thus the mind becomes the capital implication of a Sense 
of Personal Identity, and as consciousness is the mainstay, 
in short is a synonym of that sense, and is itself also the 
formal sensibility of the mind to its own states, personal 
identity becomes logically involved in mind, whether as 
something immersed in the substance of mind, or differen- 
tiated as a nucleal centre, or consentaneous with the periph- 
ery and every point of mind. 

Before denning mind or intelligence as we accept it here, 
we shall return to the initial point from which we started 
when we took apart the statement of a sense of personal 
identity. We found it, of course, to consist of, first, a sense, 
consciousness, recognition, and secondly, the thing which 

* "Blackwood Phil. Classics : Descartes." J. P. Mahaffy, p. 149. 
t " Hist, of Phil." J. D. Morell. 



The Sense of Personal Identity. 79 

was apprehended, Personal Identity. The implications of 
the Sense, isolated from its object, were consciousness in its 
finality and widest area of development, as a sentience of 
sensation, thought, emotions, and volitions, and therefore of 
mind. Now the implications of Personal Identity must be 
sought out and some deductions arising from its inspection 
given. Personal Identity implies Personality without further 
question ; it is the thing identified as perpetual. But what 
is personality ? What constitutes the person ? The person 
is the psychological aggregate of temperament, will and men- 
tal powers ; it arises from the interrelated and combined 
groups of emotions, volitions and rationality, it is feeling, self- 
determination, and intellect, and every individual is properly 
defined when these aggregates are separately decomposed 
into their elements, and their complex and mutual unions 
displayed. Obversely every phenomenon in the man, out- 
side of physiological function proper, can be referred to these 
groups or defined as the resultant or product of their com- 
binations. This becomes practically corroborated when we 
examine some excellent and generally admired example of 
characterization either in history or fiction. The individual 
is delineated on these lines, his traits can be assigned to 
these three sets of origin, and his dominant expression is 
derivative from the prevalence of one or the other class of 
ingredients in the general admixture of all. Men are per- 
sons of emotion, as the poets, seers and artists; of will, as the 
commanders, pioneers, reformers; of thought, as the philoso- 
phers, inventors, statesmen ; and while more and finer divi- 
sions can be made, the substantial and primary classification 
remains threefold. 
Says Sully : 

"If we compare not different states of the same mind, but different 
minds as a whole, we often find now one kind of mental state or opera- 
tion, now another, in the ascendant. Minds marked by much feeling 



80 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

(sensitive, emotional natures) commonly manifest less of the intellectual 
and volitional aspects or proprieties. Similarly, minds of a high degree 
of intellectual capability (inquiring or inquisitive minds), or of much ac- 
tive endowment (active minds) are as a rule relatively weak in the other 
kinds of endowment."* 

Now we know Consciousness to be the sensibility of the 
mind to its own states, and that Consciousness has for its ob- 
jects of attention the same products of psychological activity 
that give the contents of personality, viz., emotions, volitions, 
and thought, and therefore as Consciousness is only sensitive 
within the enclosure of Mind, personality must be found in 
Mind and in the Mind alone. Thus our implications from 
a sense of Personal Identity, whether we trace the legiti- 
mate inferences given by the assumption of a Sense or 
Consciousness of it, as one member of the assertion, or 
those involved in the conception of Personal Identity itself, 
as the second member, lead us peremptorily to the same 
point — Mind. And if the Sense of Personal Identity has 
formulated or helped to formulate the belief in a future life, 
then we must turn to the nature and substance of mind for 
its technical justification. 

But before doing so, it will be convenient to fix the rela- 
tions, so to speak, between Personality and Personal Identity. 
Consciousness and Personality, we have seen, are embraced in 
Mind, and we now confront the inquiry, What is Personal 
Identity, and on what does it depend ? Obviously Personal 
Identity is the continuous sameness of the person, and we are 
further philosophically warranted, if personality, as we have 
defined it, consists of parts, in regarding it as an identity 
of structure and of idea (see Int., p. 9). But there is 
something more and different beside concerned here. If 
Personality is a certain arrangement and plexus of feeling, 
volition and intellect, whatever may be the absolute norm of 

* " Outlines of Psychology." J. Sully, p. 22. 



The Sense of Personal Identity. 81 

the series, then its identity is something more than simply 
this aggregation itself. Otherwise we are led "to believe 
that a Whole is merely that which is equal to the sum of the 
parts ; but this view besides being erroneous in itself, is not 
even a necessary part of the empirical use of the category. 
Say that (as in the palaeontological researches of a Cuvier) it 
were important to reconstruct the structure of a total animal 
out of a few fossil remains, it might be of some predaceous 
animal ; here even the Empiricist, in order to the work re- 
quired of the scientific imagination, could not but consult 
the Type of animals to which similar parts are found to be- 
long, and could not but infer, for instance, that laniary teeth 
and curved claws are evidences of their having belonged to 
a predaceous quadruped. But it cannot be doubted that 
he would thus call to his aid, in constructing mentally the 
total creature, somewhat other and more than a sum of parts. 
. . . Hence, then, this category may be fitly described 
as requiring for empirical knowledge that every Whole in the 
physical and moral world shall be regarded as an Unity of 
interdependent parts, and as such, by virtue of a generic Con- 
ception or Type, which in providing the Unity in one domi- 
nant and comprehensive Thought, determines the relations 
of the Parts, as specific and integral constituents of the con- 
ceptual whole ; — that is, the one dominant conception which 
gives intelligibility to the Whole, reappears in each and all as 
the specific opposed to the generic." * 

Here the Ego starts into view at once (it need not alarm 
us : Chap. I. has certainly made us familiar with its presence 
in philosophy) as the essence of identity, the irresolvable 
kernel imbedded in consciousness and pervasive throughout 
thought and knowledge as a necessity without which thought 
and knowledge have no individual reference. And this is 

* " Spiritual Philosophy." J. H. Green, Vol. I., p. 15. 
6 



82 Man's Belief in Immortality. 

something diverse and of more radical import than anything 
implied in the quotation from Prof. Green. The identity of 
type and structure is guaranteed in Personal Identity, but 
superadded to it is the identity of an animating and ubiqui- 
tous principle. 

In the Introduction we carefully discriminated, in our dis- 
cussion of identity, between identity of structure upon which 
hangs identity of idea or generic conception, and the identity 
continuous through " a serial prolongation of states. " Now 
Personal Identity is an identity of this latter kind, and in- 
volves by comprehension the others as well, and in a manner 
which may usefully be indicated here ; while it involves 
also the further and indispensable fact of Unity. This 
should not lead to any confusion of ideas, nor can we 
be suspected of falsifying our pretensions of conducting a 
scientific analysis of the question in hand, by making such a 
statement. 

We assumed a Sense of Personal Identity ; both terms 
of the statement implicated mind as the source of conscious- 
ness and the home of Personality. Personality was itself 
compound, and to be intelligibly apprehended or to have 
any logical or possible aspect at all, as an object of thought, 
required first, that its components be the same, and main- 
tain similar relations (identity of structure or parts), what- 
ever processes of growth they might or do undergo ; second, 
that the expression, the resultant organic idea, the haecceity 
of the Schoolmen, the thisness of the man or woman, whose 
personality is regarded, should remain the same (identity 
of type or generic conception) ; and thirdly, that the abiding 
subject, whose personality has been assumed as so and so, 
perpetually and under all modifications controls and invigo- 
rates in an identical manner the person (the Ego, the indi- 
vidual, the personal identity). But such an entity under 
an intuitive category of thought and by an analogy from 



The Sense of Personal Identity. 83 

physics, to be changeless and indestructible must be single. 
Hence in our line of deduced speculations we give to the 
Ego, unity, for " it is manifest that the being of everything 
whatsoever consists in indivision : whence it follows that 
everything in proportion as it preserves its being, so in 
like manner preserves its unity. " * 

And this centripetal and centrifugal principle or being 
that holds and subjugates, and both springs from and yet 
animates the parts of personality, by a vital biogenic force, 
so to speak, maintains itself interiorly as an ego unchanged, 
in its dynamic qualities, though its exterior expression in the 
parts of personality or the facies of matter passes through a 
" serial prolongation of states." 

The strict terminologist will probably find cause to grumble 
at our use of terms, being particularly offended at the seem- 
ing separation of personality from the Ego. But there is no 
separation, except a verbal one, to connote the internal 
differentiation of our psychic nature. The Ego can have no 
status outside of the personality which is its egoism, and per- 
sonality can have no permanent existence except as implied 
in the Ego; they are irrefutably simultaneous facts of con- 
sciousness. It will be objected that we have made personality 
something like character. We have. By personality used 
with reference to man we designate all that makes up his 
psychology, viz., thought, volitions, emotions, and thereby 
embraced the familiar group of human faculties, reason, will, 
and feeling, and this without reference to the possible varia- 
tion of their several strengths, or activities, or properties. 
But were we using personality with reference to David or 
Joshua or Napoleon, we would circumscribe the generaliza- 
tion and its particular form in David as a man of emotion, in 
Joshua as a man of will, in Napoleon as a man of intellect, 

* " Metaphysics of the School." Thomas Harper, p. 177. 



84 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

and invariably our personality conceives the Ego as the 
absolute index of its own reality. 

Nor do we seem to be entirely heterodox and uselessly 
peculiar in this. Dr. Harris, in his chapters on personality,* 
says : 

' ' A person is a being conscious of self, subsisting in individuality and 
identity, and endowed with intuitive reason, rational sensibility and free 
will" "All moral agents are persons. An impersonal being cannot be 
a moral agent." "Conscious individuality and identity, conscious reason 
and free will are of the essence of personality. If a man does not know 
these in his consciousness of himself he can never know them, and per- 
sonality in its essential significance is supernatural." 

Lotze says:f 

" The complete survey of the inward experience is the only way to ascer- 
tain with what essential qualities the soul fills out its own* indivisible unity, 
which holds the manifold of its inner life together, and develops the 
many colored manifoldness of its characteristics. We have no other in- 
sight into the essence of the soul except what the observed acts of our own 
consciousness guarantee ; we know what the soul is by what it is able to 
know, to feel, and to do." 

Reid says : % 

" Whatever this self may be, it is something which thinks and deliberates 
and resolves and acts and suffers ;" 

and J. H. Green, summing up the dualistic scheme given here 
of the Personality and the Ego, says : § 

" Thus, then, in every complete act of self-consciousness I not only con- 
template my thoughts, feelings, volitions, but I know that they are the 
thoughts, feelings, and volitions of myself." 

It may be objected that these positions are metaphysical 
and not natural, but in such a part of our inquiry, science 
appropriates metaphysical results as quasi truths, until it can 

* " Philosophic Basis of Theism." S. Harris, p. 408, et sea. 

f " Microcosmus." H. Lotze. 

% " Intellectual Powers of Man." T. Reid. 

§ "Mental Dynamic^," p. 52. 



The Sense of Personal Identity. 85 

examine what physical counterparts or relations they possess 
for their final confirmation or rejection, which we may be able 
to do later. Neither can we proceed at all without meta- 
physical data, " the properties and powers of personal beings 
are different from the properties and powers of matter : 
therefore there must be a spiritual agent or cause manifesting 
itself in personality, distinct and different from matter and 
the force which manifests itself in motion. Intuitions of self- 
consciousness and of reason, free choice, love, are not identical 
with motion nor with any change of matter which is resolv- 
able into motion" (Harris). We make the personality the 
dress of the Ego, nay the body of which the Ego is the life ; 
whether we can detect this life within our life or put in any 
tangible shape a scientific conception of its impalpable sub- 
stance, or trace to it some sort of an indefinite corroboration 
or promise that a life after this earth's is possible, is now 
partly our business in this analysis. 

But to continue in our march of deduction. Finally, as 
personality rests in mind, the Ego must be located there also, 
and then, that we shall not fasten ourselves in the blunder of 
making mind a receptacle for all these constants of humanity, 
and as something preexistent to and larger than all of them, 
we affirm mind to be personality plus the Ego, and involving 
the spontaneous function of consciousness ; in other words, 
discarding the usual use of the word as applied to the intel- 
lectual powers alone, we make it the sum total of the imma- 
terialities of the human organism. And it is intended to 
avoid that dangerous inference, fostered by school-books, 
that we are bundles or a community of faculties, each 
separately active and localized, instead of a mobile unit or 
molecule so complexly constituted, that under proper stimuli 
its substance now generates thought, now an act, and now an 
emotion, or all at once when its entire generative sensitivity 
is evoked. Spencer speaks of general Intelligence in a 



86 Maris Belief in Immortality. 

similar way, with the grave difference that he seems to speak 
only of the "adjustments " between it and the environment, 
making his study the elaboration of a process, rather than the 
analysis of an entity. He says : * 

" Instinct, Reason, Perception, Conception, Memory, Imagination, Will, 
etc., must be either conventional groupings of the correspondences, or 
divisions among the operations which are instrumental in effecting the cor- 
respondences. However widely contrasted they may seem, these various 
modes of Intelligence cannot be anything else than either particular ways 
in which the adjustment of inner to outer relations is achieved, or particu- 
lar parts of the process of adjustment." 

But Mr. Sully alludes strikingly to this defective theory of 
faculties. He says : f 

" The hypothesis of faculties can, however, be criticised from the point 
of view of empirical psychology in so far as it succeeds or does not succeed 
in giving a clear account of the phenomena. Looked at in this way, it 
must be regarded as productive of much error in psychology. It has led 
to the false supposition that mental activity, instead of being one and the 
same throughout its manifold phases, is a juxtaposition of totally distinct 
activities answering to a bundle of detached powers, somehow standing 
side by side, and exerting no influence on one another. Sometimes this 
absolute separation of the parts of mind has gone so far as to personify 
the several faculties as though they were distinct entities." 

The inquiry we have begun is also sensibly helped by this 
allocation. We started with the assumption of a Sense of 
Personal Identity as the initiatory stage of a Belief in a 
Future Life ; we found in certain religions this seemed 
strongly corroborated, and by a practical synecdoche we 
enlarged the scope of the particular inferences, and general- 
ized from it to all frames of mind in which such a belief was 
recognized. Then an examination of the implications of this 
Sense of Identity leads us to the Ego and Personality, as em- 
bracing the immaterialities of our nature. At once we touch 
the crucial question how far the immaterialities of our 

* " Principles of Psychology." H. Spencer, § 174. 
f " Outlines of Psychology." J. Sully, p. 26. 



The Sense of Personal Identity. 87 

nature, summed up in the term Mind, justify our anticipation 
of a future life ; for, by exclusion, only these can be consid- 
ered as affording ground for any, inasmuch as the material 
of life — flesh, blood, bone, nerve and sinews — afford none. 
And while we have disturbed no useful conclusion of phi- 
losophy, we have trained the whole strength of our scru- 
tiny upon the group of things included, as mind, spirit, 
intellect, soul, heart, reason, under one designation, and 
as this designation, by our method, implies the fundamen- 
tal assertion of an Ego, the outcome of our study, if favor- 
able to any credence in another life, transfers its assets 
of credibility to this previous assertion of an Ego, and 
the experimental results of our introductory study are con- 
firmed. 

To return, as the Mind in our sense implies the Ego and 
Personality, these obversely imply the Mind ; and whereas 
where we find a sense of Personal Identity we shall infer 
Mind, where we find Mind, the sum total of the immateriali- 
ties of the human organism, we have found the Ego and Per- 
sonality ; but it remains to be considered whether, when we 
find, so to speak, immature mind, we then may predicate a 
partial Ego or a partial Personality. (Chap. III.) 

At this point, for the consistency and solidity of our 
analysis, we must show that the Ego and the elements of 
Personality — thought, will power, and emotion — are immate- 
rial, otherwise they could not be embraced in Mind as the 
" sum total of the immaterialities of the human organism.'* 
This will scarcely prove difficult. 

The Ego, the identifying principle, cannot be material if 
those things which predicate it are immaterial, viz., the fac- 
tors of personality, thought, will power, and emotion, for the 
predicate cannot be a contradiction in nature of its predica- 
tes ; the source cannot be different in nature from its ema- 
nations ; to be so is unthinkable, and involves intellectual 



88 Man's Belief in Immortality. 

chaos. It would not be an antinomy of reason (Kant), but an 
impeachment of reason ; it does not confront us with a mys- 
tery, but with nonsense. 

Thought, willing, and emotion or feeling, are not material, 
as inspection at once shows us. Thought, to be material, 
must be subject to the laws of matter ; it must come under 
the action of the law of gravity, and it must have extension. 
We know thought bears no conceivable relation to either. 
" I believe," says Prof. Fiske,* " it is even clearer to-day than 
it was in the time of Descartes, that no possible analytic 
legerdemain can ever translate thought into extension, or 
extension into thought." To be material, thought must con- 
form to the physical categories of matter; we must be able to 
think of it as atomic, as cubic, and as capable of motion ; to 
think so of thought, except in a purely metaphorical and 
allegorical manner, is impossible. It destroys the essential 
character of the very thing it is presupposed to classify. 
Thought is the antithesis of matter, and to bring them into 
genital or identical relations is to annihilate the nature of 
each, for their conceptions are mutually exclusive. Neither 
can matter secrete thought, or, in any conceivable way, make 
it. Prof. Huxley says of Consciousness, f it cannot "be mat- 
ter, or force, or any conceivable modification of either, how- 
ever intimately the manifestations of the phenomena of con- 
sciousness may be connected with the phenomena known as 
matter and force." And Prof. Ladd says : \ " To hold that 
the changing molecules of the brain-substance of the think- 
ers were the sole subjects, really being and acting in the 
great dramas of human speculation, involves an astonishing 
credulity. On the contrary, we seem compelled to affirm 
that no important activity, or law, or fact, in the order of 

* " Darwinism and Other Essays.'' Jno. Fiske. 

f Pop. Sci. Monthly, Feb., 1887. 

% "Elements of Physiological Psychology." G. T. Ladd, p. 622. 



The Sense of Personal Identity. 89 

such mental development, fails to demand the assump- 
tion of a real and non-material unit-being." Nor is thought 
force. "If force were transformed into thought, feeling, 
or determination, it would cease to be force, and would 
disappear. The only manifestation of force is motion. 
But thought, emotion, and choice, or volition, are not 
motion " * 

Emotion and feeling, though more popularly associated 
with animal properties and bodily attributes, cannot be made 
coincident or consequent with matter. They cannot, because 
" a wave of molecular motion in the brain cannot produce a 
feeling or a state of consciousness. It can do nothing what- 
ever but set up other waves of molecular motion either in 
the gray matter of ganglia, or in the white matter of nerve 
fibres." f And Dr. Bain says : J " A human being is an ex- 
tended and material mass, attached to which is the power of 
becoming alive to feeling and thought, the extreme remove 
from all that is material ; a condition of trance, wherein, 
while it lasts, the material drops out of view ; so much so 
that we have not the power to represent the two extremes as 
lying side by side, as container and contained, or in any 
other mode of local conjunction." And in Spencer we find 
this certification of the view of their utter essential incom- 
patibility : 

Willing cannot be co-ordinated with matter, since, as Bain 
has put it, "the distinguishing peculiarity of our voluntary 
movements is that they take their rise in Feeling and are 
guided by Intellect ; hence, so far as Will is concerned, the 
problem of physical and mental concomitance is still a prob- 
lem either of Feeling or of Intellect," and both emotion and 
thought are exempted from classification with matter. Our 

* "Philosophic Basis of Theism." S. Harris, p. 439. 
f " Excursions of an Evolutionist." Jno. Fiske, p. 332. 
\ " Mind and Body." Alex. Bain, p. 137. 



90 Maris Belief in Immortality. 

self-determination of a plan of action, or of a choice between 
two alternatives, cannot be convertible into muscular con- 
traction, or more rapid circulation of the blood, or a concen- 
tration of nerve particles at certain points, as equivalent 
terms, or even as a description of equivalent states. Tyndali 
has said, " the passage from the physics of the brain to the 
corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable," and 
Dr. Ferrier, who would certainly not be averse to a reduction 
of mental states to an aequipollency with material disturb- 
ances, has said (" Nature ") : " The uttermost that scientific 
evidence is able to accomplish is to show that cerebral activ- 
ity and the facts of consciousness are correlated facts insus- 
ceptible of further simplification, and incapable of being 
expressed in terms of the other." 

There would seem to be no escape, then, from the conclu- 
sion that mind as "the sum of our processes of knowing, 
our feelings of pleasure and pain, and our voluntary doings," * 
is not matter either as a substance or as a force. Mr. Sully 
has certainly in his exhaustive treatise upon human psychol- 
ogy, reiterated these conclusions, and repulsed in toto et ab 
fundamento all theories playing with the fiction of their 
identity. 

He says that psychology 

" must not identify the two in a materialistic way, vainly trying to ex- 
plain psychical processes by aid of physical. That is to say, the essen- 
tially heterogeneous character of the two groups as phenomena must not 
be lost sight of. There is a great deal of loose psychological thinking 
abroad just now under the guise of physiological psychology. . . . 
No sound psychology is possible which does not keep in view this funda- 
mental disparity of the physical and the psychical, and the consequent 
limits of the physiological explanation of mental facts." f In fine, " mind 
is non-material, has no existence in space as material bodies have. We 
cannot touch a thought or a feeling, and one feeling does not lie outside 
of another in space." % 

* " Outlines of Psychology." Jas. Sully, p. 2. 
f Ibid., p. 4. % Ibid., p. 3. 



The Sense of Personal Identity. 91 

So at least for clearness of intellectual vision, however in- 
soluble and baffling the problem becomes — a dilemma with 
which here we have nothing to do — we must put upon one 
side the Mind as immaterial, and on the other its physical 
environment or organic location and inhesion in the body, as 
material, with all forces associated with and ranged together 
as matter. If then the Ego is in Mind, to follow up the clue 
we have raised, the validity of a Belief in a Future Life de- 
rived from it must rest in the determination, if possible, why 
the durability of Mind seems more real when the Ego appears 
and only then. 

But when we start this inquiry, the problem to which a 
moment before we were indifferent is precipitated upon us at 
once, and a diagnosis of the relations of mind and body, the 
growth of the former, its traces in animal forms, and its 
essential powers of repair and decay, becomes necessary. For, 
let the student observe, while the immateriality of mind seems 
assured, scientifically we know that this immateriality is in 
our bodies and is nowhere else; that let the antagonism, or the 
contradiction, or the mutual repulsion of mind and matter, be 
emphasized to the last degree of conservative ferocity, yet 
only in conjunction with matter is mind known to us practi- 
cally ; it may transcend matter, it may modify matter, for all 
we know it may make matter ; but as an incontrovertible fact, 
its locus operans is in matter, and the question in this connec- 
tion is, as thus uniformly associated with matter, How far are 
we scientifically justified in expecting it can survive the dissi- 
pation of the framework in which it is encased, or the disap- 
pearance of the forces and apparatus through which it now 
acts ? The answer involves a study of this union of mind 
and body in time and space; it involves a study of the evolu- 
tion of mind, if there were one, or its creation if we can find it. 

But before passing, in the next chapter, to the discussion 
and examination of the question here raised, we mast dwell 



92 Man's Belief in Immortality. 

upon an implication which the above pages contain of con- 
siderable importance. It is this : We have repeatedly, in 
the Introduction, called attention to the fact, if the reader 
will now permit us to regard the statement so confidently, 
that a Belief in a Future Life arose from a Sense of Personal 
Identity, from Desire, and from a Moral Judgment. But in 
this chapter we have seen that Personality depends upon the 
power of thought, the susceptibility to emotion, or feeling, 
and the possession of a will. Now Desire springs from a 
susceptibility to emotion, Desire is the expression of an emo- 
tional nature, and a Moral Judgment derives its force from a 
Moral Will, and in both the admixture of thought is more or 
less extended and always inevitable. So that in the postu- 
late of Personality, Personal Identity, Self, etc., we embrace 
by a close involution all the componential tendencies of man 
towards this belief in a future life. Indeed this is only a tau- 
tological form of the assertion that in Mind, " the sum total 
of the immaterialities of the human organism," are we to 
look for any justification of our faith in another existence. 
And this, in part, is what is meant by the expression in 
Chapter I., p. 38, that "science by a new adjustment brings 
these groups under the ruling of a simpler law," though we 
shall also notice in succeeding chapters that the larger and 
deeper signification of this lies in something else more re- 
mote from obvious detection. 

Finally as we have defined Mind — and our terms and defi- 
nitions cannot be seriously objected to, or rendered invalid 
by criticism — as the union of the Personality and the Ego, 
not as a sum or juxtaposition of parts, but as an ontogeny ', and 
as Personality is the exhibition of thought, feeling, volition, 
and these vary both together and separately in individuals, as 
the facts of every-day life show us, then we are entirely war- 
ranted in assuming that Personality may vary in its internal 
equilibration of these three states from a theoretical sup- 



The Sense of Personal Identity. 93 

pression of the three, or a psychical zero, through a greater 
or less prominence of one or two, up to a maximum develop- 
ment of all or a psychical infinity, And inasmuch as the 
Ego is a function of the Personality, the Ego will come into 
greater or less statical control of Mind as the Personality 
increases or decreases in intensity. That therefore we must 
have an origin and a growth of mind, and that nature, and 
the individual or the race, as the microcosm of nature, may 
both be expected to reveal it, and that its growth is to be 
traced in the coming into view of its components Personality 
plus Ego. Nor is this all. With complete legitimacy, nay, 
by an imperious necessity of thought, we must assume that 
the durability of mind itself is more and more certain as these 
elements are more and more strengthened, have more and 
more factual potency and extent. And f uther yet : if, in the 
examination now to be entered upon, we find the elements 
of Personality first appearing in time before we can discern 
the emergence of the Ego, then without disrupting in any 
sense their mutual dependence, we are compelled to regard 
this actual precedence as a hint that the appearance of the 
Ego in consciousness is a contingent upon the interaction of 
the elements of Personality ; that implicitly held within the 
potentialities of thought, feeling and volition, it is recognized 
only as Consciousness reveals it, for Consciousness is the coeffi- 
cient of the Ego, determining its reality, and the Ego itself 
needs the elements of Personality to be in certain proportions, 
and in certain dynamical states, before it can arise at all. 

And all this may be understood thoroughly without losing 
sight of, or surrendering in any measure, the postulate of the 
unity of Mind itself. As analogy and illustration assist won- 
derfully the conception of philosophic positions, we will close 
here by an elaboration in chemical science, explanatory of 
the preceding paragraphs. 

And first this diagram is inserted as at a glance interpret- 



94 Maris Belief in Immortality. 

ing the genetic relations of the constants we have so contin- 
uously emphasized. 

f Ego revealed by Consciousness. 

Mind 1 -r^ ,. Li 7 r evoking the Ego when in certain pro- 

Personality < Thought }■ " . , . r 

L ( V 1 J portions and certain dynamical states. 

The chemical analogue we have chosen with which to 
throw into an easier conceptional form these elements, and ap- 
proximately to explain their vital lines of union, is that of an 
electric light, and the temptation to use this seems auspicious, 
when we reflect upon the singular resemblances and apparent 
powers of mutual replacement which this mysterious force 
presents, to those nervous activities which play along the cer- 
ebral filaments and shoot in multiplied diversities of direc- 
tion and intensity from the cerebral cells. 

The electric light as representative of the Mind, in action 
presupposes a force, and a workshop or manufactory of force ; 
the force is the electric current, the manufactory the electric 
battery. The composition of the battery briefly is made up 
of a receptacle and the immersion of metal plates of con- 
trasted electrolytic power in an acid solution. Here the Ego 
of our mental analysis becomes the electric current, the Per- 
sonality the electric battery, and the components of Person- 
ality the elements of the battery, producing by the violence 
of their mutual collisions and attacks the resultant voltaic 
stream that is revealed in the light itself. The light is thus 
made the counterpart of consciousness, which, appositely, 
when deeply vitalized by a strong Personality, illuminates 
the circumstances and surroundings of the individual, and 
publishes his moral existence, as the glowing line of radiance 
does those of the electric lamps. The comparison is seen at 
once in the following set of parentheses : 

( Electricity revealed by Light. 
Electric Light < Electric ( Acids j producing the Electricity when in cer- 
( Battery ( Metals ( tain proportions and states. 



The Sense of Personal Identity. 95 

The use of an image or a physical or mechanical analogy 
is perhaps not always advisable as a means of exact expres- 
sion, and the one here employed is clearly no more valu- 
able than such figurative helps usually are. No exact repre- 
sentation of the mind is intended, but only a superficial and 
temporary expedient to suggest by a mechanical and practi- 
cal illustration the possible relations of its elements. The 
wires by which the electric current is transferred to the paper 
thread has no counterpart in any supposable process of the 
manifestation of the Ego, nor does the arrest and blocking 
of the electric current through the molecular resistance of 
the carbonized filament, with the consequent production of 
light, bear any conceivable relation to the kind or order of 
connection between the Ego and Consciousness. Neither 
does Consciousness correspond to light exactly in itself or 
consequences. To be sure its advent and erection is, or 
should be, accompanied by orderly movements, deeper 
thought, and discreet judgment, yet it is essentially realized 
only internally, and cannot correctly be compared to an ex- 
terior illumination. As Prof. J. F. Ferrier has written : * 
" Deprive man of consciousness, and in one sense you do not 
deprive him of existence or of any of the vigorous manifes- 
tations and operations of existence. In one sense, that is, 
for other s, he exists just as much as ever. But in another 
sense you do deprive him of existence as soon as you divest 
him of consciousness. In this latter sense he now ceases 
to exist ; that is, he exists no longer for himself. He takes 
no account of his existence, and therefore his existence, as 
far as he is concerned, is virtually and actually null." Our 
image has been introduced to give an objective unity and 
rationality to our metaphysics. 

One word in closing. We have embraced in Mind the 

* Introduction to " The Philosophy of Consciousness." J. F. Ferrier. 



96 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

Ego, and the objection may be raised that we have thus made 
the subject the derivative from or a factor of its own posses- 
sions or parts. How can we speak of " our mind " when the 
mind already includes us ? This really is a quibble about 
words. Our method comprehensively gathers together those 
portions of the human organism which may be regarded 
as containing or implying the assurances of a future life 
under the term Mind. As we examine the origin of these 
portions, and their more intimate genesis and dependence, 
we shall see that we have made no elision of the proprietor- 
ship of the individual over his faculties, nor eliminated the 
integral solidarity of any one who recognizes and speaks of 
his feeling, his thinking, his willing. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE GENESIS, GROWTH, AND DURABILITY OF MIND. 

The very universal acquiescence to the strongly drawn 
boundaries between the phenomena of thought and those of 
matter have apparently deterred many thinkers from exam- 
ining more closely their actual union as simultaneous effects. 
Other students have plainly declared their wish to find in 
matter the source and explanation of mind, and with Prof. 
Huxley say : 

" The materialistic terminology is in every way to be preferred. For 
it connects thought with the other phenomena of the universe, and sug- 
gests inquiry into the nature of those physical conditions, or concomi- 
tants of thought which are more or less accessible to us, and a knowledge 
of which may in future help us to exercise the same kind of control over 
the world of thought as we already possess in respect of the material 
world ; whereas, the alternative, or spiritualistic, terminology is utterly 
barren, and leads to nothing but obscurity and confusion of ideas." * 

Others, no less willing, perhaps, seem to have averted their 
eyes from the pleasant possibilities in this direction, and with 
magnanimous self-denial shut out the delusive hopes it fos- 
ters, exclaiming with Prof. Allman : " The chasm between un- 
conscious life and thought is deep and impassable, and no 
transitional phenomena can be found by which as by a bridge 
we may span it over," or with Mansel, "we seek the bound- 
ary line of their junction, as the child chases the horizon, 
only to discover that it flies as we pursue it." 

But more intrepid minds insist, however, with an emphasis 
perhaps slightly symptomatic of their latent hopelessness, 
that " matter is already in the field as an acknowledged 

* " Lay Sermons, etc., on the Physical Basis of Life." T. H. Huxley. 
7 



98 Man's Belief in Immortality. 

entity — this both parties admit. Mind considered as an in- 
dependent entity is not so unmistakably in the field ! There- 
fore as entities are not to be multiplied without necessity, we 
are not entitled to postulate a new cause, so long as it is 
possible to account for the phenomena by a cause already in 
existence ; which possibility has never yet been disproved.'' 
(Ferrier.) 

Mischief and confusion have arisen, however, not so 
much from the progressive tendencies of materialism as 
from the frightened incontinence of those who hate and 
stammer at it. Really fearing the moral consequences of 
any general acceptance of the materialistic creed as promul- 
gated by such writers as Vogt, Buchner, Moleschott, these 
apostles of orthodoxy have derided and rejected the truth 
as to the extraordinary capabilities of matter as we know it 
when organized and animate. They have neglected or 
dreaded to penetrate deeper than the surface and overcome 
their singular revulsion before matter, as if in matter there 
lurked the poison of atheism, immorality, and crime. We 
certainly wish to be swayed by no prepossessions in this in- 
quiry, and our judgment shall be cleansed of any remnant 
of the unjust odium such writers have attached to matter. 

The inquiry started here as to the durability of Mind in- 
volves an assumption which should be more narrowly exam- 
ined, i. e., that the immateriality of Mind in some sense 
implies its immortality. This seems a questionable postu- 
late, and one whose certainty hitherto has rather rested upon 
our ignorance of what is meant by immateriality than upon 
any indubitable power of perpetuation resident in itself. By 
spirit, soul, mind, we have for a long time been accustomed 
to designate something we called a substance, but which 
we strenuously urged was exempt from the laws of matter. 
But this is really neither logical nor natural, or indeed any- 
thing but guesswork and sophistry. Immateriality — at least 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 99 

that here considered, that of mind — certainly may expand, 
may assume new aspects, propagate new offshoots, wane 
and wax in the intensity of its activity, in the scope of its 
action ; at least we are told so by those who turn with terror 
from the fetich of matter. Indeed those super-mundane 
talkers tell us of the movement of spirit, of its affinities, 
of its repulsion, its stoppages and passages ; but these are 
familiar terms in the vocabularies of force and matter, and 
they either, as applied to mind, mean that spirit is not so 
contrasted to matter as we are told, or that in our utter igno- 
rance of what it is, and buoyed by fantastic hopes of what it 
may be, we decline into the use of language which, so far as 
exact expression goes, seems only applicable to the moods 
and cases of material things. In what sense, then, is the 
world of immaterial things so different from that of mate- 
rial things that we can base upon it its exorbitant claims 
to deathlessness ? We think in this : that immateriality is 
supposed to be exempt from the processes and results of 
mutation, decomposition, disintegration, solution and decay. 

This is a natural inference (but only an inference), because 
decomposition, disintegration, solution, and decay are only 
thinkable in connection with matter, and are not thinkable in 
connection with that which is its contradictory. However, 
matter in its ultimate parts suffers no extinction, and, if w T e 
trust physics, is in this sense as deathless as the angels. 
Therefore it is to organized living matter, and compounded 
substances, we must limit the exclusion, and we must learn 
how animated nature dies, in order to learn from the specta- 
cle how spirit cannot die ; we must turn to inanimate nature, 
and see how it displays the protean evolutions of innumera- 
ble analyses and syntheses, that we may regard spirit as some- 
thing in a sense immutable. 

The structures of organic and inorganic nature, the myriad 
forms of living things, on the one hand, and the numerous 



ioo Man's Belief in Immortality. 

compounds, salts and minerals, on the other, are in a constant 
flux of change, alteration, and disarrangement, their elements 
ever making new combinations, unstable equilibria falling 
into more permanent balancements, composite fabrics slip- 
ping down into simpler and basic unions. The oxygen in the 
air attacks the metals and turns them into oxides, the waters 
of the earth dissolve or remove them, forming deposits 
which, again reduced by organic acids, are dissipated to be 
again re-made. The rains dissolve the rocks, and carry to the 
oceans their ceaseless burdens of the mouldering hills. The 
hidden fires of the earth, or the sudden compression of rock 
masses in the titanic convulsions of the terrestrial crust dis- 
turb the stable minerals, and throwing them out melted and 
disorganized, brings about new alliances, or by exposing hid- 
den areas involves new districts in the changes of the surface. 
The rocks disintegrate and fall apart, and their substance 
invigorates the herbs and beasts. The invisible gases of the 
atmosphere are decomposed in the actinic rays of the sun, or 
forced into new unions by the electric alchemy of lightning. 
The waves of fluctuation pass over the face of inorganic na- 
ture, and though it resists the forces that play upon it, it ever 
assumes new forms, varying back and forth between the lim- 
its of possible chemical complexity and mechanical per- 
manence, and possible chemical simplicity and chemical 
instability ; yet keeping the sum total of its ultimate units 
unchanged, the grand aggregate of its capital undiminished. 
In vegetable and animal life a feeble protest is raised 
against the inheritance of death— a protest perpetually de- 
spised, perpetually renewed. Vitality, whether regarded as 
matter organizing itself, or some sort of force not correlate 
with any law of motion, entering the realm of matter, has 
raised into being hosts upon hosts of growing, crawling, fly- 
ing, running, breathing, thinking objects. They run their 
life courses, they multiply and hold back the sway of final 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 101 

silence by their fecundity ; the spark of life is passed on from 
line to line, and, chased by all the demons of destruction, 
still sweeps before them a dancing and exultant flame. 

But the vitality of the individual perishes, and the bolts 
it has forged fall into ashes before the prying and corrod- 
ing fingers of chemical affinities. These multiplex bodies, 
this flesh, blood, fibre, bone, sinew, nerve and muscle, fats 
and oils, this pigment in the skin, phosphate in the bones, 
aldehydes and alcohols, stearine and margaritine, colloids and 
crystallines, this burnish and splendor on the beetle's elytra, 
this golden iris in the toad's eye, these jewelled flowers in 
the forest, the mosaics of the snake's back, ay ! and the 
poison in his fang, the blush on woman's cheek, and the 
dilating corpuscle of the Monera, are all manacled by doom 
and succumb to a predestined dissolution which the chemist 
can write on his blackboard or copy in his stills and beakers. 
They disappear as the skein of vapor drawn across the morn- 
ing sky, or the thin note of a highland echo. 

These mutations we associate with matter and its forms, 
and when we look for some comprehensive cause, it is found 
in the chemical activity of elemental attractions, forcing apart 
these elaborate bodies which only Life could maintain, and 
bringing back their carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, to 
single and simple compounds. " One-half of all known ma- 
terial consists of oxygen, and, on the surface of the globe, 
combination with oxygen is the only state of rest." (Cooke.) 
And if extended molecular fabrics did not perish in our 
atmosphere by chemical change, mechanical violence would 
destroy and separate them. 

Lastly, can we claim for immateriality any better immor- 
tality than that of force (matter in motion), for are we not 
told " every manifestation of force must have come from a 
preexisting equivalent force, and must give rise to a subse- 
quent and equal amount of some other force " ? When, there- 



102 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

fore, a force or effect appears, we are not at liberty to assume 
that it was self-originated, or came from nothing ; when it 
disappears we are forbidden to conclude that it is annihilated: 
we must search and find whence it came and whither it has 
gone ; that is, what produced it and what effect it has pro- 
duced." (Youmans. ) Force, however, retains no peculiar 
form, if motion, the first impact changes it to heat and sound, 
which again may be transmuted into motion or electricity or 
chemical effects. Abstractly, force and matter are regarded 
as in their sum irreducible, though each " changes form with 
protean facility, traversing a thousand cycles of change, van- 
ishing and re-appearing incessantly." The claim of imma- 
teriality, that personate in you or me, is here considered as to 
whether it can retain the consistency and expression it has in 
us as individuals after the defunction of that animal part we 
call body and force. 

Chemical and physical laws are unrecognized in the world 
of immateriality; from the nature of the case they there 
become obsolete, they inhere in matter and ex-hypothesi are 
excluded from spirit or mind, and hence we say that " imma- 
teriality is supposed to be exempt from the processes and 
results of mutation, decomposition, disintegration, solution, 
and decay." 

Yet why in us should not spirit suffer a disruption of its 
parts, why should not its members fall away and mutiny, and 
under the flagitious influence of a transcendental eremacausis 
disappear in a waste of ruin ? If it cannot, it is because it 
seems to us, as scientific observers, that the Spirit of Man 
must be similar to these irreducible atoms of matter ; these 
ultimate granules that are adamantine against obliteration ; 
that the Spirit of Man is a unit, to return by a fated reitera- 
tion, that the Ego, the Personal Identity, is an indecompos- 
able and supreme radical.* Here we see at once that our 

* "All mankind place their personality in something that cannot be 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 103 

inquiry broadens out into the discussion of the genesis, 
growth, and durability of Mind, the proper subject of this 
chapter; for as Ego is in mind, by our method of terms, we 
must inspect the circumstances and history of Mind, to pene- 
trate the recesses of its first appearing, and learn how the 
individual, the Ego arises. Thereby we may learn, as sug- 
gested in the last chapter, that " the durability of mind itself 
as individualized is more and more certain as its elements 
are more and more strengthened," and that " as the Ego is a 
functional product of the Personality, the Ego will come into 
greater or less statical control of mind as the Personality 
increases or decreases in intensity." 

It is essential to understand at once whether mind and 
matter are ultimate, or whether they are secondary products 
or ejects of an antecedent substance, and whether they can be 
made derivative in any way from each other apart from mere 
association, and whether lastly they are different sides of the 
same substance. In regard to the first, any materio-meta- 
physical protoplasm or Bathybius is totally inconceivable. It 
may be dismissed at once as hopelessly at variance with all 
we know and all we think. That matter and mind can be 
derivatives one from the other, thus involving their virtual 
identity, is strongly contradicted by what we have already 
said, and it makes little difference to what extent we endow 
matter "with powers of attraction and repulsion," giving it 
with Priestley an " inherent activity." (Bain.) We can use 
no better or more convincing language than these words of 
Prof. Tyndall : * 

"Granted that a definite thought and a definite molecular action in 
the brain occur simultaneously, we do not possess the intellectual organ, 
nor apparently any rudiment of the organ which would enable us to pass 

divided or consists of part. A part of a person is a manifest absurd- 
ity. ... A person is something indivisible, and is what Leibnitz calls 
a monad." — Thomas Reid. 

* "Fragments of Science." J. Tyndall, p. 121. 



104 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

by a process of reasoning from the one to the other. They appear 
together, but we do not know why. Were our minds and senses so 
expanded, strengthened, and illuminated as to enable us to see and feel 
the very molecules of the brain ; were we capable of following all their 
motions, all their groupings, all their electric discharges, if such there be ; 
and were we intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of thought 
and feeling, we should be as far as ever from the solution of the problem : 
How are these physiological processes connected with the facts of con- 
sciousness? " 

And in regard to the famous but now somewhat less aggres- 
sive doctrine of " a double-faced unity " we may, we think, 
with entire confidence, accept the views of Prof. Calderwood: * 
" the requirements are not met by a theory which represents 
the organic and rational features of our life as two phases 
belonging to a single order of being. ... A substance 
with two sets of properties, and these directly antagonistic, 
as represented by voluntary and involuntary actions, seems an 
unwarrantable hypothesis. Man represents more than sen- 
sori-motor apparatus, working an elaborate muscular system, 
by means of stores of nerve energy." 

Turning now to the work of our review of the advent and 
increase of mind in material forms as a part of zoological 
history, we observe that before mind could effect any entrance 
as it were into the machinery of animal life, certain special- 
ized organs would in all probability be necessitated for its 
accommodation and use. These are the nerves, and the en- 
tire nervous system and its affections have become identified 
with mental acts and mental health or disease. In man this 
connection is the most complex and indubitable ; but where in 
the lowest forms of life we detect nerves, we are really con- 
templating a mute prophecy of the approach of Mindj and 
the increasing elaboration and number of the former assure 
us that its first manifestations are near at hand. 

We find least differentiated and formless masses of matter 

* " Relations of Mind and Body." H. Calderwood, p. 315. 



The Genesis, Groivtk, and Durability of Mind. 105 

— protoplasm — endowed with contractility, a power which is 
automatically exerted and maintains the body of protoplasm 
in continuous motion, and is the property whose efficiency 
in this rudimentary material augurs for the possibility of 
nerve paths and nervous organization. 

"That the property specially displayed by nerve is a property which 
protoplasm possesses in a lower degree, is manifest. The sarcode of a 
Rhizopod and the substance of an unimpregnated ovum exhibit move- 
ments that imply a propagation of stimulus from one part of the mass to 
another ; and through the nerveless body of a polype, we see slowly trav- 
elling and spreading a contraction set up by touching a tentacle — a con- 
traction which implies the passage from part to part of some stimulus 
causing the contraction." * 

Present in the tissues of plants, enclosed between the mem- 
branes of leaves, following the lengths of the nettle spines, 
circling in the pores of the fungus, this " physical basis of 
life " in the vegetable world exhibits this irritability every- 
where, and restlessly moves beneath the objective of the 
microscope with ceaseless pulsations. In the Rhizopods, a 
group of microscopic organisms ranged at the base of the 
animal series, we find the same protoplasm forming their 
minute bodies and displaying its motility, but superadded 
to the mere contractility of vegetable protoplasm, something 
like excitability is evinced, and the almost invisible atom 
"selects and swallows its appropriate food, digests it, and 
rejects the insoluble remains. It grows and reproduces its 
kind. It evolves a wonderful variety of distended forms, 
often of the utmost beauty." f The rhizopods have no 
nerves, but sensitivity to surroundings allude, as it were, to 
their imminence, their impending formation in the succeed- 
ing phases of life. Passing upward to the Hydrozoa, in some 
of the simplest representatives of this province, the Medusse, 
we find the germinal nerve tracts appearing, and the first 

* " Principles of Biology." H. Spencer, § 302. 

f " Fresh Water Rhizopods of N. Amer." J. Leidy, p. 5. 



106 Maris Belief in Immortality. 

differentiation of the general tissue into nerve conduits or 
fibres, lines of stimulation, and for the discharge of " excita- 
bility." 

In the medusa nerve fibres and nerve cells are both pres- 
ent. Nerve fibres become more or less aggregated into 
trunks, ganglion cells commence to form, plexuses of cells 
and fibres are seen ; the medusae respond to mechanical, 
chemical, and thermal stimulation ; " the occurrence of reflex 
action is of a very marked and unmistakable character," * 
and, lastly, ganglionic coordination, or a simultaneous and 
accordant response to stimuli of different nervous centres, 
is established. The approach of mind is heralded with 
every new link added which brings the nerve fabrics in closer 
analogy with those of man. Not that there is mind, but 
there are sensations which formulate the beginnings of emo- 
tions in higher animals, and emotion forms an early area of 
contact between the tract of matter and the overlaid tract of 
mind. Again, as feelings of discomfort and feelings of satis- 
faction arise, the organism whose nerves transmit the various 
stimuli endeavors to rid itself of the former and to prolong 
and engage the latter, and in this way primary motions of 
avoidance and desire arise, and the merely sensible elements 
of pleasure and pain are created, while actions of apparent 
intention are evoked. 

In the corals (Zoantharia) the nerve parts are obscure. 
The fixed position of these animals, their simple make-up 
and absence of multiple organs, prohibit the presence of a 
nervous system to any extent ; determination, guidance of 
movement, regulation of an internal mechanism, are unneces- 
sary, and the nerves do not appear. But Duncan has shown 
a plexiform arrangement of nerve fibres in the base of Ac- 
tinia, and probably some undifferentiated nerve tissue can be 
detected in the disc as well. (Nicholson.) 

* "Jellyfish, Starfish, and Sea Urchins." . G. J. Romanes, p. 104. 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 107 

In the Echinoidea, Profs. Romanes, Ewart and Loven, 
have determined the existence of a plexus of nerves covering 
the exterior and interior walls of the spherical sea urchin, 
and that these are centralized in the aesophageal nerve ring, 
or the nerve surrounding the oral aperture. The coordi- 
nation of the movements of the ambulacral feet and the 
spines, in effecting a return to a normal position after inver- 
sion, has been established by these authors, and a certain sort 
of individuality so far indicated as " it became apparent, in 
the case of certain individual specimens, that they mani- 
fested a marked tendency to rotate always in the same direc- 
tion, or to use the same set of foot rows for the purpose of 
righting themselves." * 

From disagreeable stimulations these creatures endeavored 
to escape while they gathered about the dimly distributed 
illumination of sunlight at one point or part of their tank. 
By an ingenious use of rotation in a vertical plane upon an 
apparatus running by clock-work, confusion in the nerve 
centres was introduced and their sense of gravity upset, as 
they could not then tell " which was up and which was 
down." In the fixed Crinoidea a fibrillar tissue, apparently 
composite in properties (sensori-motor) is found, not strictly 
nerve fibre, but having a substitutional value, " the centre of 
a nervous system, the peripheral portion of which consists of 
the axial cords of the rays, arms, and pinnules, and of the 
numerous branches proceeding from these cords." f And this 
might have been anticipated from the more simple structure 
and less complex life of these animals. 

In the provinces of life so far mentioned, observers have 
thought that there are traces of intelligence. W. L. Lindsay J 

* "Jellyfish, Starfish, and Sea Urchins." G. J. Romanes, p. 281. 
f "Voyage of H. M. S. Challenger." Rep. on Crinoidea, P. H. Car- 
penter, p. 114. 

\ " Mind in the Lower Animals," W. L. Lindsay, Vol. I., pp. 51 et seq. 



108 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

quotes Dr. Carter as regarding the Infusoria or Rhizopoda 
capable of " will, determination, fixed purpose or aim, inten- 
tion, cunning, ingenuity in the adaptation of means to an 
end, the recognition of food, and the selection thereof." 
Carpenter speaks of the constructive skill of the Amoeba ; 
Houzeau mentions Actinophrys as finding its way to food ; 
Pouchet speaks of the Amoeba changing its shape "at will." 
Lindsay quotes Allman, Macintosh, Wilson, as giving an in- 
telligent meaning to mere acts of escape, retreat, building, 
and food assimilation in the Protozoa, Ccelenterates, and 
Annuloids. This is quite uncalled for, and introduces a bias 
in observation mischievous and deceptive. All such actions 
spring from rudimentary adaptations in the organism, and 
beget, in consequence, movements of repulsion or approach 
which are largely reflex ; they bear no understandable mental 
characteristics, and are simply functional, directed by chemi- 
cal and mechanical congruity. 

None of these apparently purposeful actions can be re- 
garded as evidences of ideation. Psychosis has not yet 
appeared, but the fundamental structure for Neurosis is laid. 
The extension and multiplication of nerve fibre, the grouping 
of nerve cells, the ganglia and plexuses, are needed for the 
government and coordination of parts, and, as parts become 
more numerous, as organs form within the body of the ani- 
mal and their points of external contact increase, then nerve 
tissue augments, and both its ramifications and its centraliza- 
tions become more prominent, and in broken and irregular 
order, differently qualified and differently developed, a reti- 
nue of mental features springs to the surface of life. We 
deprecate misinterpretation. These structural instrumentali- 
ties do not originate mind, but they enable mind, ab extra, to 
cohere more and more closely to matter, and we are here at 
liberty to regard this application of mind to matter as the 
work of God, or as a natural necessity. 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 109 

Passing to the Mollusca, a kingdom which in its highest 
representatives ranks in functional diversity and development 
of parts higher than the lowest vertebrates, we find a great 
advance in specialization. Here the organs of stomach and 
digestive regions, liver, heart, eyes, kidneys, muscular divi- 
sions and detailed functions of muscle, tentacles and organs of 
touch, organs of smell, gustatory tracts, and elements of res- 
piration, aquiferous system, glands and sexual organs, all 
demand numerous nerves for coordination and sustentation ; 
government is instituted, ganglia centralize sensation and 
distribute motion. In the Cephalopods, nerve parts reach 
considerable development. 

" In the octopus the cerebral volume is considerable. The cranial car- 
tilage contains a pellucid fluid comparable to the cerebro-spinal liquid of 
the vertebrates. There are the three typical pairs of ganglia — the cere- 
bral, pedal, and visceral — surrounding the gullet and connected by com- 
missures, whilst the nerves which supply the buccal mass, the alimentary 
canal, the heart, the bronchia? and the mantle, develop additional local 
ganglia."* 

With this amplified nervous organization, with the massing 
of nerve cells into ganglionic centres, and the increased webs 
of nerve commissures, with the papillose surfaces sensitive to 
grades of touch, and the higher order of centres of sense 
each indicative of nerve stuff specialized and complex, the 
evidences of mind multiply. Organized matter, as those 
parts adequate to express it are completed, comes into 
broader contact with mind, and the functions of mind begin, 
as it were, to penetrate the inert substance over which it is 
now, so to speak, playing with an accelerated brilliancy and 
motion. Feeling raises emotion and perception, desire and 
appetite develop invention or imagination, and design and 
purpose are traceable in the more complicated manoeuvres of 
these higher forms of life. 

* "Structural and Systematic Conchology." G. W. Tryon, Jr., Vol. 
I., p. 70. 



I io Mans Belief in Immortality. 

" Prof. Kollman, of Munich, who studied its habits in the Naples aqua- 
rium, describes the octopus as recognizing its keepers, ' actually manifest- 
ing attachment for these men,' as resenting the intrusion of new comers 
into the tank with ' jealous hate ; ' as showing courage and persistence in 
its attack on prey, as well as intelligence in the mode of getting at its prey 
by climbing over a barrier between two tanks ; as exhibiting rivalry in 
love, with its usual result in much higher animals — jealousy and combat- 
iveness amounting even to ' ferocity ; ' as manifesting ' energy, fierceness 
and determination ' in the protection of the eggs ; as expressing emotional 
changes or states, by play of color, through nearly all the shades of the 
rainbow, ' so that it is easy to tell, therefore, whether he is angry, pleased, 
frightened, or sleepy.' " * 

The molluscan type, which culminates in the Cephalopods, 
was not destined to bring to completion the alliance of mind 
with nerve structure, and the aspect of mentality in them is 
neither remarkable nor constant. A system of bilateral sym- 
metry along an extended line of nerve-fibre, with one ex- 
tremity (the head) established as a point of reference, coor- 
dinating action and motor power, was the physical form 
which engages the susceptibilities of mind most closely, and 
expresses them most completely. In the articulates (Annu- 
losa) this structural type is imperfectly illustrated, but it is 
typically and fundamentally preserved in the vertebrates at 
whose apex we ourselves stand. 

Looking first at the articulates, whose chief representatives 
are the Crustacea (crabs, lobsters, shrimp, etc.), with the sub- 
class, Arachnida (scorpions and spiders), and the Insects 
(beetles, butterflies, flies, bees, wasps, etc.), we find them to 
possess bodies composed of a longitudinal series or chain of 
body-segments (somites), with a nervous cord consisting of a 
double line of ganglia reaching from end to end upon the 
ventral or under side of the animal, with, in the insects, a 
more conspicuous concentration of nerve-cells at one ex- 
tremity (cephalization). Organs of sense are present ; inter- 
nal organs representing the circulatory, digestive, and res- 

* " Mind in the Lower Animals." W. L. Lindsay, Vol. I., p. 62. 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 1 1 1 

piratory tracts are present ; and numerous limbs providing 
for locomotion or flight suggest the extended area of experi- 
ence or observation they are permitted to enter, with its 
concomitant effect of improved intelligence. 

And in these groups, especially among the insects, where 
communal government has become established, and a sort of 
economical polity built up, emotional traits and a fragile sort 
of inventiveness, with really a great fund of acquired skill 
and self-protective habits, are apparent. It would be easy, 
at this point, to turn in a medley of anecdotes illustrating 
the intelligence of these animals, but it would also be a haz- 
ardous waste of space. It would only serve as a corrobora- 
tion to the statements of observers, whose conclusions in 
their own words can be sufficiently trusted. Neither are we 
called upon to discuss the famous question as to whether 
instinct is inherited habit, acquired, in the first place, by ex- 
periment and design, or an implanted or structural tendency 
coordinate with the nature and parts of the animal it rules.* 
We admit, by the necessity of the evidence, and as in entire 
accordance with the anticipations, the views here taken of 
the approach of mind upon matter encourages, that these 
orders possess intelligence. We furthermore expect it to be 

* " There have been two chief theories propounded to meet the case. 
On the one hand, G. H. Lewes, and also with him, apparently, Wundt 
and others, conceive of instinct as a kind of ' lapsed intelligence ' analo- 
gous to the effect of habit as operating during the development of a single 
human life. Just as we come to do things in a mechanical and semi-con- 
scious way as the result of having frequently done them with full con- 
sciousness, so actions of the lower animals, carried out with conscious 
design at first, may, as the result of long continuance in succeeding gen- 
erations and the operation of the principle of heredity, ultimately become 
instinctive. In opposition to this view, a more humble origin has been 
assigned to the phenomenon. According to this theory, instinct does not 
involve intelligence in any stage of the action. Its origin is mechanical. 
The germ of instinctive action is due to accidental variations which have 
become fixed and perfected by natural selection." — J. Sully : " Nature," 
Vol. XXIX., p. 332. 



112 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

of a high grade ; but we do not think any serious assent can 
be given to Sir John Lubbock's tentative remarks that 
" when we consider the habits of ants, their social organiza- 
tion, their large communities and elaborate habitations, their 
roadways, their possession of domestic animals, and even, in 
some cases, of slaves, it must be admitted that they have a 
fair claim to rank next to man in the scale of intelligence." * 
In emotional traits, in similarity of functions, in parity of 
sense organs, in equivalence of brain and nerve endowment, 
they present few surfaces of contact with the empyrean of 
mental action developed in the vertebrate type. They rep- 
resent the limit of mental implication which the articulate 
type attains ; but their liliputian ingenuity, their slender 
mimicry of man, and their monotonous industry form but 
faint reflexes of the intra-cerebral and extra-peripheral sen- 
sations and their consequent impulses of man or his conge- 
ners. And, as has been cautiously remarked, we must not 
place too much weight upon objective resemblances of ac- 
tions behind whose visual similarity a wide difference of 
emotional force may exist, or, to use the words of Mr. 
Romanes, " a possibly non-mental character in apparently 
mental adjustments." 

The remarkable observations of Sir John Lubbock, f those 
of Bates, Belt, Huber, McCook, Kirby and Spence, Treat, and 
many others, can leave no doubt in the mind of an unpreju- 
diced reader that the ants and bees possess a range of emo- 
tional feeling, power of adaptability, some ingenuity, tenacity 
of purpose, affections of the senses, and, curiously, however 
derived, elaborate social instincts, reaching, in the termites 
(not true ants) and ecitons, a form of division of labor alto- 
gether wonderful. 

The Crustacea are also gifted with intelligence. Story 

* " Ants, Bees and Wasps." Sir Jno. Lubbock, p. i. 
f Ibid. 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 1 1 3 

upon story has been collected by Romanes and Lindsay to 
illustrate their nimble wits, and to us they are far more inter- 
esting and intrinsically entertaining than the inscrutable 
uniformity of the ants and bees, whose indefatigable industry 
has somewhat the aspect of stupidity. Without dwelling on 
this prolific theme, we quote one instance, as striking as any, 
reported by Mr. P. H. Gosse, to whose affectionate zeal for 
knowledge science was first indebted for the discovery. 

The hermit crabs, so familiar to all naturalists and wander- 
ers by the sea, inhabit the dead shells of Gasteropods (uni- 
valves), thrusting in the shell box of the mollusc their soft, 
defenceless bodies, while their fore-limbs and energetic man- 
dibles protect its entrance. Amongst this wily clan is a crab 
living in the deeper seas (Pagurus Prideauxii), which, when 
dredged up, is almost invariably found bearing upon the 
inner lip of its borrowed home a small anemone known as 
the Cloaklet (Adamsia palliatd) . Commensalism, as this 
association is called, is very common in animal life, and this 
instance is one of the most interesting. It is a zoological 
co-partnership, apparently for both business and social aims. 
Mr. Gosse was fortunate to obtain a specimen of this co- 
operative union, and finding the Pagurus had outgrown his 
quarters, presented him with a new and larger shell. Unlike 
his congener, the common hermit (P. Bemhardus), this little 
creature seized the new home by his claws, and, without 
changing his residence, commenced to pull it about the tank, 
apparently resisting the temptation to enter until his com- 
panion might awaken to the realization that a house moving 
was imminent. But after some time the change (not seen by 
Mr. Gosse) took place, and then, ensconced in his new castle, 
the little hermit was seen with his pretty friend attached in 
its usual position upon the inner lip of the new shell, but 
partly adhering to the breast of the crab. 

The inference was irresistible that the hermit had, in some 



114 Mans Belief in Immortality, 

way, enlightened its companion as to his intentions, secured 
her to his own body, and transferred himself and her to the 
larger house, where the obedient Cloaklet had resumed its 
ordinary place. But this was not all. After eleven days the 
Adamsia became detached and lay helpless on the bottom of 
the aquarium, but again, later, was found adhering, in a new 
place, to the hermit's shell. Mr. Gosse determined to push 
conclusions to their uttermost, and so he gently removed the 
anemone from its protector, and, when it had sank to the 
bottom, drove the Pagurus to it. 

" No sooner did the crab touch the Adamsia than he took hold of it 
with his claws, first with one, then with both, and I saw in an instant 
what he was going to do. In the most orderly and expert manner he pro- 
ceeded to apply the Adamsia to the shell. He found it lying base upward, 
and therefore the first thing to be done was to turn it quite round. With 
the alternate grasps of the two pincer-claws, nipping up the flesh of the 
Adamsia, rudely enough, as it seemed, he got hold of it so that he could 
press the base against the proper part of the shell, the inner lip. Then 
he remained quite still, holding it firmly pressed, for about ten minutes, 
at the end of which time he cautiously drew away first one claw, and then 
the other, and, beginning to walk away, I had the pleasure to see that the 
Adamsia was once more fairly adhering, and now in the right place." * 

We think that the evidence of mind here is entirely in 
favor of the crab, as we should expect, the anemone being 
a passive and simply mechanically responsive agent. W r e 
quote with admiration Mr. Gosse's contemplative allusions 
to the significance of these facts, though we suspect he over- 
states their value : 

" But what a series of instincts does this series of facts open to us ! 
The knowledge, by the crab, of the qualities of the new shell ; the delay 
of his own satisfaction till his associate is ready ; the power of communi- 
cating the fact to her ; the power in her of apprehending the communi- 
cation ; her immediate obedience to the intimation ; her relinquishment 
of her wonted hold, which, for months at least, had never been inter- 
rupted ; her simultaneous taking of a new, unwonted hold, where alone it 
could have been of any use ; the concerted action of both ; the removal ; 

* " A Year at the Shore." P. H. Gosse, p. 245. 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 1 1 5 

her relinquishment of the transitory adhesion as soon as its purpose was 
accomplished ; her simultaneous grasp of the new shell in the proper 
places — all these are wonderful to contemplate, wonderful considered 
singly, far more wonderful in their cumulation." — {Ibid.) 

Mind, in these orders of animal life, displays the presence 
of its triple substance, as thought, volition and feeling, but it 
in no sense has so far unfolded the latent amplitudes of its 
intentions as to make a personal being, or bring into action 
and recognition the Ego. It is yet fragmentary and suggest- 
ive only. The attributes of thought are yet very limitedly 
shown, the strength and pulsations of will are meagrely sug- 
gested, emotion bears no measurable relation in its force to 
the developed vigor of human passion ; it is simple and 
invariable, and has no dramatic range or even the moral 
depth of that discovered in the lower orders of vertebrate 
life. If the erection of the Ego depends, as we assume, upon a 
certain admixture or interdependent activity of thought, will, 
and feeling, and if the basis of individual permanence rests 
upon it, then, certainly, in these animals we find no guarantee 
for an expectation of their second life. The rudimentary 
alliance of mind here with matter or organization has no sig- 
nificance except a prophetic one, and the dissolution of the 
latter must simply liberate the elements of the former, yet 
too insufficiently incorporated in life to gravitate around any 
secondary centre, or to bring that centre — the Ego — into 
even an adumbrant existence. 

It could not be expected. The nervous system itself, the 
vehicle of mind in these groups, is scarcely more than func- 
tional, and remains subordinate in the scheme of their con- 
struction, or, at least, only rises to parity with their nutritive, 
reproductive, and muscular organization. It does not tran- 
scend them, or assume imperial control, and, by centraliza- 
tion, gain an autocratic supremacy, as in man. Insects can 
be dismembered, and their evolutions and movements are 



n6 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

continued, while, in the more vegetative orders, physical 
division only multiplies the individuals, each fragment be- 
coming a new organism. The praying Mantis, with its head 
off, keeps up its curiously mimetic devotions, and Dr. Canes- 
trini, of Florence, Italy, decapitated insects which retained 
their vitality, generally for hours and even days afterwards, 
instant death resulting in only a few cases.* The coleopiera 
(beetles) showed considerable sensitivity, and with them the 
orthoptera (crickets, grasshoppers,) and hymenoptera (wasps, 
bees), some suffering almost instant death, while other in- 
sects seemed totally unaffected by it. The lepidoptera (but- 
terflies), after decapitation, did not seem to be seriously dis- 
commoded ; and the diptera (flies) behaved with even greater 
stoicism. Under the influence of moisture some species of 
?nyriapods (centipedes) appeared almost indifferent to this 
frightful amputation, running hastily away with the anterior 
extremity of their trunk raised, and persisting in this state of 
activity for many days. 

The nervous ganglia are yet, in these animals, mainly 
equivalent to each other, and each is able, in its neighbor- 
hood, to coordinate and initiate movements. No nervous 
metropolis is established whose excision always means in- 
stant, or nearly instant, death. That remarkable deposition 
of nerve-cells at one extremity of the body, and their conse- 
quent multiplication and psychometric activity and intensity, 
known as the brain in the Vertebrates, is only suggestively 
prefigured in the cerebral ganglia of insects. 

As Dr. Carpenter says : f 

"It is in the high grade presented by the Nervo- Muscular System, and 
in the obvious subordination of the whole structure to its purposes, that 
we see the most characteristic difference between the Vertebrata and the 

* " Revista Scientifico Industriale," Firenze,' May, 1883. 
f " General and Comparative Physiology." Third edition, W. B. Car- 
penter, p. 426. 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind, wy 

sub-kingdoms already passed in review. In the latter the functions of 
this system are obviously restricted to the maintenance of the nutritive and 
reproductive operations, and to the guidance of the individual, by means 
of its sensory endowments, in its search for food, or for an individual of 
the opposite sex, the locomotive portion of the apparatus being predomi- 
nant in the Articulata, whilst the organs of sense attain a higher relative 
development in the Mollusca. In the Vertebrata, on the other hand, we 
find both these elements in a state of much greater concentration and 
completeness ; and we meet with superadded organs obviously ministering 
to the Intelligence, which seems almost exclusively restricted to this group 
of animals, and which is, perhaps, its most characteristic endowment. 
The nervo-muscular apparatus thus becomes no longer the mere instru- 
ment of sustaining animal life ; it now ministers to higher endowments ; 
and the intelligence called into activity by impressions received through 
the organs of sense, and executing its voluntary determinations by the 
apparatus of motion, has an existence independent of either." 

With these expectations we pass to the examination of the 
vertebrate type of life, which alone was destined, in the mul- 
tifarious experimentations, activities, and manifestations of 
creative force, to bring the world of mind — or, as Clifford 
might say, Mind-Stuff* — into absolute conjunction with the 
frame and material of forms. 

The doctrine of Descent by Derivation, however inter- 
preted or modified, cannot be successfully disputed to-day, 
nor need the Christian philosopher conclude that it elimi- 
nates divine forethought and supervision. The most extreme 

* "Recognizing the impossibility of deriving the psychical element 
from the physical, Clifford reaches the conclusion that ' every motion of 
matter is simultaneous with some ejective fact or event which might be 
part of consciousness.' This simple ejective factor event may be regarded 
as a molecule, so to spenk. of mind-stuff ; and we reach the startling con- 
clusion that ' the universe consists entirely of mind-stuff. Some of this is 
woven into the complex form of human minds containing imperfect rep- 
resentations of the mind-stuff outside them, and of themselves also, as a 
mirror reflects its own image in another mirror, ad infinitum. Such an 
imperfect representation is called a material universe. It is a picture in a 
man's mind of the real universe of mind-stuff.'" — " Excursions of an 
Evolutionist," J. Fiske. " A Universe of Mind-Stuff," p. 328. 



n8 Man's Belief in Immortality. 

positions of scientific biologists can never exclude the prin- 
cipium omnipotens et directrix, and though it is unessential for 
the import of our inquiry here to bring this into any relief, it 
is implied, of necessity, in every system which searches for 
the origin of higher animal forms in the lowest, and bridges 
the chasm between them by a chain of mingling hypothetical 
and actual organisms. Modification which pursues, either 
deviatingly or undeviatingly, a single general direction, 
establishes its own teleological inception. 

The doctrine of types in animal life cannot be discarded, 
nor does it seem that the substitution of simply spontaneous 
and irrelevant tendencies in animal life, leading, by diver- 
gence, from an initial stage to the seven recognized groups, 
can be conveniently accepted. The multiplicity of secondary 
causes which recent zoological and biological research has 
established — as adaptation, variation, heredity, nutrition, en- 
vironment, selection, survival/of the fittest, sexual preference, 
interbreeding, physiological selection, use and disuse, hete- 
rogeneous generation, primogeniture, isolation and migration, 
parental instinct, mechanical strain, etc., — does not efface, in 
any comprehensive view of the subject, the paramount em- 
phasis to be laid upon the idea of types towards which, 
through oscillations and discrepancies, assisted or caused by 
these same secondary causes, organic force, in its several 
lines, was directed. Nor is, indeed, so-called miraculous 
intervention, or the sudden arrival of new forms under the 
action of an extraneous influence, necessarily, as the case 
stands to-day, excluded. It is, indeed, altogether probable, 
though a philosophic restraint should be put upon the whole- 
sale and wasteful invocation of such a power, which charac- 
terizes certain circles of religious thought. 

Prof. Owen says, concerning the origin of species, that 
Natural History " teaches that the change would be sudden 
and considerable ; it opposes the idea that species are trans- 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 119 

mitted by minute and slow degrees." * Prof. Huxley says : 
" We greatly suspect that she (Nature) does make consider- 
able jumps in the way of variation now and then, and that 
these saltations give rise to some of the gaps which appear 
to exist in the series of known forms." f Prof. Mivart 
says : " There are, then, abundant instances to prove that 
considerable modifications may suddenly develop themselves, 
either due to external conditions or to obscure internal 
causes in the organisms which exhibit them. Moreover, 
these modifications, from whatever cause arising, are capable 
of reproduction, the modified individual ' breeding true ;'"J 
and Prof. Cleland has vigorously insisted that " in the evo- 
lution of organization there is a non-material impulse." 
And all this can be held with a due regard for the cumulat- 
ive and effective weight of the agencies recounted, which 
some naturalists would elevate into prima causce, guided 
rather by inclination than by facts, and feeling an instinctive 
repugnance and dread of the Dens ex machina as preached 
and delineated by some slipshod canters and irreconcilables 
of Christianity. 

In the vertebrate type, the ascension from the lowest form 
to the highest — man — reveals a graded or partially graded 
series of related groups. Without passing beyond the sim- 
plest expression of the vertebrate idea in the amphioxus, or 
sea-lamprey, to follow the speculations, interesting and sug- 
gestive as they are, of Haeckel, as to our relations to the As- 
cidians, worms, and the primitive gastrsea, we find that, start- 
ing from the sea-lamprey and rising through the fish, reptiles 
birds, and mammals, an extraordinary exemplification of evo- 
lution is presented. On whatever grounds explained, we do 
discover unmistakable relations binding these classes to- 

* "Anatomy of Vertebrates," Vol. III., p. 795. 
f "Lay Sermons, Criticism on Origin of Species." 
% " The Genesis of Species," p. 116. 



120 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

gether in a phylogenetic line. And it is of the greatest 
interest and importance in this inquiry to find, also, that this 
line illustrates, along with morphological improvement, pari 
passu, or nearly so, an increasing incorporation of mind in 
forms, until in man the consummate exposition of both is 
reached. The lower classes of animal life do, in their repre- 
sentatives, illustrate a defective and inconsequential involu- 
tion of mind with organic types. But, so to speak, the am- 
plitude of mind finds their limits too narrow to contain it, or 
structurally incapable of displaying its variety and force. A 
new type, the vertebrate, contrasting, by a wide gap of sepa- 
ration, with all of these, assimilates mind progressively, from 
its lowest examples in the fish to its highest in man, and the 
conclusion, which may be regarded as defining a law, is 
forced upon us, that there is a relevancy of form to the compo- 
sition and strength of mind ; that, whether always discover- 
able or not, indubitable relations obtain between the quantity and 
quality of mind and the anatomical detail and physiological 
perfection of the animal j that, again, this concomitancy is 
so constant and so profound that we are scarcely permitted 
to decide whether it is mind shaping matter that introduces 
higher forms, or whether it is matter conforming more appo- 
sitely to the requirements of mind that inducts it (mind) 
more and more into life. 

Thus the task now before us, in our attempt to trace the 
origin of mind, and thereby the rise of the Ego through the 
Personality, is to follow the development of the vertebrate 
type, expecting, with each advance, a higher mentality until 
we reach man, when we will pursue the same line of observa- 
tion in noting the intimate union in him of mind and body, 
thereby reaching logically the practical and working hypothe- 
sis on a scientific basis, that the Ego itself must possess a ma- 
terial framework as its residence and expression. 

In the review of the animal forms gathered within the 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 121 

technical limits of the Vertebrata, we find, according to Hux- 
ley, three primary groups or provinces : the Ichthyopsida, 
the Sauropsida, and the Mammalia. The Ichthyopsida em- 
braces the fishes, the Sauropsida the reptiles and birds, the 
Mammalia the quadrupeds and primates ; and these divisions 
represent not a geographical or functional distribution, but a 
morphological one, and they are distinctively successional and 
progressive. The fish are the lowest organized, the reptiles and 
birds follow, and the mammals complete and close the series. 
Yet lower steps of change can be indicated, and each of these 
larger classes incloses a series of more and more elaborated 
forms, so that, beginning at the lowest, they affect to pass 
into one another until the highest type of the group is 
reached. A graded line of forms represents, on the basis of 
the most thoroughgoing evolution, the phylogeny of Man or 
his genealogy in time. And when we turn to an examination 
of the development of the impregnated ovum in the female 
of the highest vertebrates, we discover in its life history a 
resume of this historical lineage, although modified and con- 
tracted, abridged and altered. Or, to speak more plainly, 
the growth of the germ in the human embryo serially pre- 
sents the growth of the germs of the lower groups of animals, 
superadding to them its own propulsion into the highest 
sphere of zoological activity. To quote Haeckel,* "that 
Ontogeny is a recapitulation of Phylogeny ; or, somewhat 
more explicitly, that the series of forms through which the 
Individual Organism passes during its progress from the egg 
cell to its fully developed state, is a brief, compressed repro- 
duction of the long series of forms through which the animal 
ancestors of that organism (or the ancestral forms of its 
species) have passed from the earliest periods of so-called 
organic creation down to the present time." This improve- 
ment is morphological, physiological, and mental, and we 

* " The Evolution of Man," Vol. I., p. 6. 



122 Man's Belief in Immortality. 

wish incidentally to call attention to the fact that a system of 
derivation such as Haeckel has proposed, whereby man may, 
through twenty-two hypothetical though possible and recog- 
nizable forms, trace his animal pedigree to the lowest monera, 
or a spot of agitated protoplasm, can be accepted without vio- 
lence to religious or idealistic prepossessions, on the assump- 
tion made here of Mind cohering more and more closely, ab 
extra, to organic forms as they more and more adequately 
suit its requirements for such inhabitation. 

We say this improvement is morphological, physiological, 
and mental. That it is the former two, every student of 
Natural History knows. What is known as Baer's Law ex- 
presses the features of zoological promotion. The evolution 
of " animal form is determined by two conditions : firstly, by 
a continuous perfection of the animal body by means of an 
increasing histological and morphological differentiation or 
an increasing number and diversity of tissues and organic 
forms ; secondly, and at the same time, by the continual 
transition from a more general form of the type to one more 
specific." (Haeckel.) Exactly this is evident in the primary 
groups we mention, and in their separate or individual mem- 
bers. At the same time the insupportable misapprehension 
must be avoided or dismissed that the whole number of ver- 
tebrate genera are placed by evolutionists in a straight line 
with Man at the top, and an Amphioxus (Lancelet) at the 
bottom. The orders graduate, or are supposed to graduate, 
through some special tribe of forms into one another, except 
that the Birds, Reptiles, and Mammals are all derived from 
the Amphibia ; but the relations of the various groups are de- 
lineated by a genealogical tree, in which, from some root 
type, the divergent classes allied to and representative of 
that type are the branches, while the order, as a whole, is 
preliminary to the superposition of a higher type, which rises 
from some one of its many genera best suited and most plas- 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 123 

tic for this purpose. A very reduced scheme of this evolu- 
tion, as generally proposed, is given in this diagram : 

Primordial Invertebrata. 

! 

I II I . I 

Infusoria. Zoophytes. Worms. Annuloida. Anrralosa. 

(Corals, etc.) I (Starfish, etc.) (Crabs, Insects, etc.) 

Ascidians (Sea Squirts). 

Primitive Vertebrata. 

I 

Amphioxus (Lancelet). 

Marsipobranchii (Lampreys, Hags). 
Elasmobranchii (Rays, Sharks). 



Ganoids (Sturgeon). Teleostei (Bony Fish). 
Dipnoi (Mud Fish). 
Amphibians (Frogs). 



Reptilia (Snakes). Monotremes (Ornithorhynchus, etc.). 

Aves (Birds). Marsupials (Kangaroo, etc.). 

I 
Placental Mammals. 

I 
Man. 

That the improvement in form and function is real and 
inestimable, this language of Prof. Owen asserts : " I have 
been led to recognize species as exemplifying the continuous 
operation of natural law or secondary cause, and that not 
only successively, but progressively, from the first embodi- 
ment of the Vertebrate idea, under its old Ichthyic vestment, 
until it became arrayed in the glorious garb of the Human 
form."* And Prof. Parker says, most eloquently : 

" As already mentioned, the forecast of the mammalian type, which is 
very plain in the cartilaginous fishes, becomes much more plain, definite, 

* " Anatomy of Vertebrates," Vol. III., p. 796. 



124 Man's Belief in Immortality. 

and indubitable in the frog and toad. In fact, the building materials are 
passed from hand to hand, as it were, in this way : the batrachian fore- 
fathers brought down all things meet for the work, borrowing and taking 
cartilages from the Selachians, and bones from the Ganoids, and noise- 
lessly forming them, after due selection, into a new, more compounded, 
and nobler structure. 

"The rude ancestors of the tribes that give suck began to build on this 
higher level with these more varied or better-shaped blocks and plates ; 
and by the infinite cunning, the effectual working of the morphological 
force, in due time the consummation was effected of vertebrate form. 
But the consummation of all, the election and selection that has been 
going on since the beginning of the ages, is seen in man, who alone gives 
meaning to, and reads the meaning of, the whole mystery of organic 
life."* 

That mental improvement has gone hand in hand with 
zoological improvement may be by us, in this inquiry, more 
closely examined as bearing upon the relations of mind and 
body, with an ultimate reference to individual immortality. 
We have concluded, not without authority, that mind has not 
nor can originate in organized matter, but we already antici- 
pate finding mental improvement in vertebrates synchronous 
and simultaneous with morphological improvement; and if 
this is so, on the basis accepted, we are driven to believe that 
mind enters matter from outside, but enters from outside in 
accordance with a law formulated by matter itself. Facts, 
therefore, as to this mutual relation of perfected forms and 
perfected mind, are deeply interesting and significant. 

The nervous system is the residence of mind in man and 
animals, and if we follow up its growth and improvement or 
elaboration in vertebrates, and the growth and improvement 
of its bony or skeletal encasement, we shall expect to observe 
the advance of each, together with an increasing functional 
activity, diversity, and substantiality of mind. And the ordi- 
nary generalities of comparative anatomy warrant this expec- 
tation entirely. The language of Prof. Haeckel, putting 

* "Hunterian Lectures," Feb., 1879, "Nature," Vol. XX., p. 83. 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 125 

aside its ulterior tendencies and disregarding the animus of 
its dictation, is most expressive and luminous on this point : 

' ' In the economy of the human body this system performs the func- 
tions of sensation, of voluntary movement, volition, and finally the high- 
est psychical functions, namely, those of thought ; in a word, every one of 
the various activities which constitute the special subject of Psychology, 
or the science of the mind. Modern Anatomy and Physiology have 
demonstrated that these functions of the mind, or psychic activities, are 
immediately dependent upon the more delicate structure of the central 
nervous system, upon the internal conditions of the form of the brain and 
the spinal marrow. Here are placed the extremely complex mechanism 
of cells, whose physiological function constitutes the mind life of man. 
It is so complex that to most people its function appears to be something 
supernatural, and incapable of mechanical explanation. But the history 
of the evolution of the individual furnishes us with the most surprising 
and significant information as to the gradual origin and progressive forma- 
tion of this most important system of organs. For the first rudiment of 
the central nervous system in the human embryo makes its appearance in 
the same most simple form in which Ascidians and other inferior Worms 
retain it throughout life. A perfectly simple spinal marrow, without 
brain, such as, throughout its existence, represents the organ of the mind 
of the Amphioxus, the lowest of all Vertebrates, first develops from this 
rudiment. It is only at a later period that a brain develops from the 
anterior extremity of this spinal cord, and this brain is of the simplest 
form, similar to the permanent form of this organ in the lower Fishes. 
Step by step this simple brain develops still further, passing through forms 
corresponding to those of the Amphibia, Beaked Animals {Ornithostoma), 
Pouched Animals, or Marsupials, and Semi Apes {Prosimicz), until the 
highly organized form is reached which distinguishes the Apes from all 
other Vertebrates, and which finally attains its highest development in the 
human brain. But, step by step with this progressive evolution of the 
form of the brain, the evolution of its peculiar function, the psychical 
activities, moves on hand in hand."* 

The usefulness alluded to in Chap. II., of " a study of this 
union of mind and body in time and space," now turns out 
to be a single inquiry, for as Mind appears more and more 
in time, its spatial habitat advances in type, or, vice versa, as 
the apparatus of mind is bettered, the strength and variety of 
mind is advanced. 

* " The Evolution of Man," Vol. I., p. 22. 



126 Man's Belief in Immortality. 

The vertebrate animal, in regard to his bony, supporting 
framework or skeleton, possesses a chain of articulating bony 
rings, the spine or backbone enclosing an adit or tube in 
which the spinal cord is placed, bearing at one extremity 
(the head) a brain box or skull, not always present, and at 
the other a cavity, encircled, in the higher orders, with a ring 
of anchylosed or articulating bones (the pelvis). From the 
anterior length of the spine arises a system of bony arches 
which form the thoracic chamber ; and the anterior aspect of 
the skeleton presents two symmetrically placed appendages 
(arms, wings, or fore legs) attached to the outer surfaces 
of the thoracic chamber. Two similar appendages, posteri- 
orly placed, are inserted upon the pelvic bones (hind legs, 
etc.). These anterior and posterior appendages are com- 
posed of a series of members variously adapted to purposes 
of locomotion and prehension. The fish, amphibia, and rep- 
tiles are much modified from this type, but maintain their 
essential relation to it by the possession of a backbone and 
brain box, while in the Lancelet there is no brain, the spinal 
axis {chorda dorsalis) is never ossified, and the spinal cord is 
a line of unenclosed nerve filaments. The body of a verte- 
brate consists of the appendicular structure (arms, wings, 
legs, fins, paddles, etc.), and of two tubes, one ventral, hold- 
ing the haemal, respiratory and digestive systems, or some of 
them, the other dorsal, holding the rope of nerves known as 
the spinal cord. The organs in the larger cavities of the 
ventral tube, as heart, lungs, kidney, stomach, liver, etc., are 
associated with a chain of nerve ganglia which form the sym- 
pathetic nervous system, and probably "represents, wholly 
or partially, the principal nervous system of the Annulosa 
and Mollusca." (Huxley.) 

The spinal cord enclosed in the dorsal tube is a collection 
of nerve fibres and nerve cells, and enters by the foramen 
magnum at the base of the brain, the brain box or skull, its 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. \2J 

threads anastomozing with the bulk of nerve matter forming 
the brain, and becoming the avenues of efferent and afferent 
impulses, shocks, waves of feeling, etc. It preeminently dis- 
tinguishes the Vertebrates, and " would appear to be unrep- 
resented among invertebrated animals " (Huxley.) The 
brain box or skull is not considered a necessary element in 
the vertebrate type, though, with the exception of its lowest 
example, it is always present. It is regarded by Owen as a 
modified prolongation of the vertebrate column, and its parts 
as metameral segments enormously differentiated ; by Hux- 
ley, on the other hand, it is defined as a peculiarly developed 
anterior extremity of the body, having no homologies or 
analogies with the vertebrae. In it reposes the brain, and it 
becomes, with its contents, for our especial purpose, the Chief 
object of study. We desire to follow the growing intensive 
strength of Mind as we rise in the vertebrate scale, therefore 
rising also in the structural adaptations of the skull to its re- 
quirements, and in the functional energy of the brain masses 
and their development for its special activities. 

And without, then, relinquishing the advantages gained by 
this attention to the one part of the vertebrate anatomy which 
lies closest to the field of our inquiry, we may note incident- 
ally that with the increase of brain or improvement of skull, 
by correlation, there goes on a general betterment of the 
entire frame, functions, and parts of animals. 

The lowest step of the vertebrate stairs is formed by the 
Amphioxus, a singular fish inhabiting the sandy bottoms of 
the Mediterranean, and so far deprived of an apparent re- 
semblance to a vertebrate type that its discoverer called it a 
snail. Says Haeckel * : 

" The Amphioxus has no specialized head, no brain, no skull, no jaws, 
no limbs ; it is without a centralized heart, a developed liver and kidneys, 
a jointed vertebral column ; every organ appears in a much simpler and 

* '■ Evolution of Man," Vol. II., p, 99. 



128 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

more primitive form than in the higher Vertebrates and in Man. And 
yet, in spite of all these various deviations from the structure of other Ver- 
tebrates, the Amphioxus is a genuine, unmistakable Vertebrate." 

In an animal with no cerebral member, and in which the 
bare histological elements of the spinal system only are formed, 
Mind of necessity is excluded in any expanded or even posi- 
tive fashion. A rudimentary exemplification of a superior 
type, it does not mentally even rank with the finished prod- 
ucts of life in inferior orders, as insects, Crustacea, etc. Its 
anatomy is correspondingly of a low and undeveloped 
character. It forms an order of itself, and though placed 
with the fishes, its anomalous characters separate it markedly 
from the normal examples ; its organs are immature, wanting, 
or embryonic in nature. Its expression is transitional. 

Passing to the Marsipobranchii, or round-mouthed and 
pouch-gilled fish, we find a group of lowly organized verte- 
brates, parasitic, and therefore morphologically degraded in 
habits ; we find an advance in the cerebro-spinal system, a 
nearer approach to the ordinary types, and an advance in 
general structure. In them, "the spinal column consists 
of a thick persistent notochord enveloped in a sheath, but 
devoid of vertebral centra. The neural arches and the ribs 
may be represented by cartilages, and there is a distinct skull 
presenting cartilage at least in its base, and retaining many 
of the characters of the fcetal cranium of the higher Verte- 
brata," and again, "the brain, though very small, is quite dis- 
tinct from the Myelon, and presents all the great divisions 
found in the higher Vertebrata, that is to say, a fore-brain, 
mid-brain, and hind brain " (Huxley), and of this brain 
Haeckel says : 

"These five simple primitive brain-bladders, which reappear in a 
similar form in the embryos of all higher Vertebrates, from Fishes up to 
Man, and which undergo a very complex modification, remain in the 
Round-mouths in a very low and undifferentiated stage of development. 
The histological elementary structure of the nervous system is also much 
more imperfect than in other Vertebrates." 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 129 

The hags and lampreys present many resemblances to the 
Amphioxus ; the vertebral column is yet unformed, the noto- 
chord still representing it ; they have no bony skeleton, no 
pectoral nor pelvic limbs. Their habits of subsistence upon 
the fluids of their hosts has brought about constructive 
peculiarities, and has perhaps eliminated the influences of 
competition which educate and reenforce Mind in animals. 
At any rate, their mentality is low, judging, as we seem 
entitled to do, from their nervous organization. 

The Elasmobranchs — the sharks and rays — succeed, and 
illustrate another upward rise in anatomical diversification of 
parts and in their nervous system. 

" Their skeletal growths are uncombined ; in their skin are numerous 
placoid grains or spines, forming the exoskeleton, while in the endo- 
skeleton the first step toward ossification is seen in the calcification of 
the superficial cells of the cartilage." (Parker.) 

The vertebral column in some genera is well represented, 
the skull is partially ossified, but advance in the cranial 
development is less marked than in structural features which 
promote in them the vertebral type, and bring to light closer 
relations with its higher forms. They are, according to 
Haeckel, " (1) the double structure of the nose ; (2) the 
internal gill-arch apparatus, together with the jaw-arches ; 
(3) the swimming bladder, or lungs ; and (4) the two pairs of 
limbs." In the line of improvement as developed by'evolu- 
tionistic students of Nature (which line, whether it repre- 
sents a real phylogeny or not, does certainly present a real 
morphological sequence) from the Selachians, on one hand, 
sprouted the Ganoids (Mucous fishes) and the Teleostei 
(Bony fishes), and on the other the Dipnoi, from whom the 
Amphibia arose, and thence, by a second bifurcation, reptiles 
and birds, and mammals leading to man. 

In the Ganoids, fish provided with an exterior hard armor 
of dermal plates, the advance in cranial capacity and pro- 
9 



130 Man's Belief in Immortality. 

tective ossification is notable, though great difference in its 
extent is recorded for the various genera of the order. At 
any rate a distinct premonition of the bony fishes is dis- 
covered in them, and "in those Ganoids that are called 
Holostei, the endoskeleton rivals that of the ordinary fishes 
in hardness, and yet the exoskeleton arrives at its high- 
est pitch of perfection. In the head, the dermoskeleton is 
brought into adaptation to the more important architecture 
of the inner parts. " (Parker.) 

In passing to the bony or ordinary fishes characterized by 
a copious deposit of bone, a replacement of the cartilaginous 
parts in lower fishes, by bone and a disappearance of the 
external plate armor, we pass through a series of forms which 
graduate from cartilaginous to bony fishes, and the osseous 
elements which form starting points for this change were all 
contained in the dermal denticles of the sharks and rays 
(Elasmobranchs). In the bony fishes the brain box varies in 
size, conditions, structure and contents, "the brain in the 
Teleostei has solid cerebral hemispheres " (Huxley), the ver- 
tebral column is complete, and the nervous system special- 
ized and elaborated. 

But the tree of morphological sequence (or hypothetical 
lineage), whose apex is Man, by lateral oscillations sends out 
in its ascent branches of related forms, which terminate in 
finial orders, beyond which in their direction nothing further 
is found. The bony fishes form such a side fruitage, and to 
ascend the main stream of improving types, divulging in 
Man, we go back to a second zoological sprout from the 
Elasmobranchs, from whom the Ganoids and the bony fishes 
have both issued. This second sprout is the Dipnoi or 
double breathers. The Dipnoi or mud fishes are few in num- 
ber, but are found in widely separated districts ; they enjoy 
a semi-amphibious existence, breathing through gills in the 
water, and remaining embedded in hardened and dry mud, 



The Genesis, Growth, mid Durability of Mind. 1 3 1 

in which state they breathe the air. The group embraces 
Protopterus in Africa, Lepidosiren in South America and 
Ceraiodus in southern Australia. According to Haeckel and 
Huxley they retain many characteristics of the primitive 
fishes, and among these is the structure of the brain, " while 
their adoption of the habit of breathing air through lungs 
introduced a great advance in the vertebrate organization." 

From the Dipnoi we rise to the Amphibia ; in them we 
discover in the limbs or extremities the five digits as distin- 
guished from the numerous digits of the fins of fishes (Gegen- 
baur), the skeleton becomes more multiplex and bony, and with 
it the muscular system is differentiated, while, " owing to the 
intimate correlation of the muscular to the nervous system, 
the latter also naturally made marked progress in point of 
function and structure. We therefore find that the brain is 
very much more developed in the higher Amphibia than in 
Fishes, in Mud-fishes, and in the lower Amphibia. " 

It is a useless admixture of citations with our easily recog- 
nized design of showing the improvement in cranial parts, and 
therefore in all probability cranial functions or mental grade, 
to discuss the four orders in this sub-class. Their anatomi- 
cal superiority over the lower tribes which we have reviewed, 
is evident; in functional variety and adaptation to higher con- 
ditions they establish a direct advance. They vary greatly 
among themselves, and from their architectural diversity 
are related on the one hand to reptiles and birds, on the other 
to mammals. Following the first branch of this double kinship 
we find in reptiles and birds an increasing development of 
brain parts, nervous vitality, sensory stimulation, specialized 
organs and differentiated structural elements. The brain of 
amphibians exhibits the double hemispheres which in the 
higher vertebrates is so marked, and which is less formed in 
the lower orders, and these in Amphibia are united by com- 
missural fibres ; olfactory lobes are sent out in front, and 



132 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

though the cerebellum or little brain is smaller than in the 
bony fbhes, the ganglionic cephalus or head must be on the 
whole classed above those of the teleostei. In birds and 
reptiles, " the hemispheres may obtain a considerable develop- 
ment. Their outer walls are much thickened, while their 
inner walls become very thin ; and a well-developed ganglionic 
mass equivalent to the corpus striatum is formed at their 
base." In birds, indeed, as the climax of this subordinate 
direction or aim in evolution, we find cranial capacity, ex- 
tended simultaneously with a general exaltation of life and 
physiology. Says Prof. Parker : " The increased size of the 
brain-mass has given use to a very different proportion of 
cranial to facial elements as compared with what exists in the 
reptile, and the process of ossification is carried to its utmost 
perfection." 

Looking at the other deflection of forms from the amphibia 
which leads us to the Mammalia, we find these broad distinc- 
tions separating them from the first, viz., Birds and Reptiles. 
Says Haeckel : 

"The differences which distinguish Mammals on the one side from 
Reptiles and Birds on the other, are so important and characteristic, that 
we may quite safely assume a bifurcation of this kind in the vertebrate 
family tree. Reptiles and Birds — which we classed together as Mono- 
condylia or Sauropsida — coincide entirely, for instance, in the characteristic 
structure of the skull and brain, which is strikingly dissimilar from that 
of the same parts in Mammals. In Reptiles and Birds, the skull is con- 
nected with the first cervical vertebra (the atlas) by a single joint-process 
(condyle) of the occipital bone; in Mammals, on the contrary (as in Am- 
phibians) the condyle is double. In the former, the under jaw is com- 
posed of many parts, and is connected with the skull by a peculiar bone 
of the jaw (the square bone) so as to be movable ; in the latter, on the 
contrary, the lower jaw consists of but two bone-pieces which are directly 
attached to the temporal bone. Again, the skin of the Sauropsida (Rep- 
tiles and Birds) is covered with scales or feathers, that of the Mammals 
with hair. The red blood-cells of the former are nucleated, those of the 
latter non-nucleated. The eggs of the former are very large, are provided 
with a large nutritive yolk, and undergo discoidal cleavage resulting in a 
Disc-gastrula ; the eggs of the latter are very small, and their unequal 



The Genesis ■, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 133 

cleavage results in the formation of a Hood-gastrula. Finally two char- 
acters entirely peculiar to Mammals and by which these are distinguished 
both from Birds and Reptiles and from all other animals, are the presence 
of a complete diaphragm, and of the milk-glands {inammce) by means of 
which the new-born young are nourished by the milk of the mother." 

In all this we have exhibited that extensive alteration of 
parts in correlation with the growth of the nervous system, 
its centralization in the brain and increasing predominance, 
viz., we see structural modification coordinate with mental 
progress. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE GENESIS, GROWTH, AND DURABILITY OF MIND. {Con- 
tinued). 

The Mammals lead us directly to Man through a graded 
series of groups, in which a general tendency upwards is dis- 
cerned, an improvement of all parts in sympathy with advance 
in the nervous system, the brain development and mental 
powers, this controlling movement being modified by the 
special habits or associations of various tribes, which brings 
into prominence this or that trait, and consequently this or 
that corresponding anatomical and physiological representa- 
tive. These groups are the Monotremata, illustrated by the 
singular Platypus (Ornithorhynchus paradoxus) of Australia, 
the Marsupialia, illustrated in the Kangaroos, and the Placen- 
tal Mammals, illustrated by all other animals referred to the 
class Mammalia. These last, the placental mammals, are 
again divided into two subdivisions, those animals with inde- 
ciduate and those with deciduate uteri, the former represented 
in Horses, Swine, and Ruminants (Cows, Deer, etc.), Whales, 
Dolphins, etc., and the latter in Beasts of Prey, Elephants, 
Apes, and Man, and this last again into two branches, those 
with girdle-shaped and those with discoidal placentas. 

Connected with these ascending steps of morphological 
promotion, there is, in the main, an elevation in the type, 
mass, and structure of the brain, the organ of Mind par ex- 
cellence in mammals, and therefore, by the warrant of our 
previous examinations, an actually greater and greater pre- 
dominance of mental faculties, a growth of Personality, an, 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 135 

as it were, adumbrant Ego coming nearer and nearer to the 
surface of sentient life. 

In the Monotremata the brain " has remained at a much 
lower stage of development than that of any other Mammal." 
(Haeckel.) " The hemispheres of the brain are abundantly- 
convoluted in Echidna, but are smooth in Ornithorhynchus." 
(Huxley.) Convoluted brain surface is generally considered 
an evidence of superior nerve structure, and therefore of 
mind function, but conclusions on this point are to be care- 
fully guarded. " It has been found, for instance, as a general 
rule, to which there are only few exceptions, that in animals 
of the same group or order, the number and complexity of 
the convolutions increase with the size of the animal. This 
may be recognized, for instance, by a comparison of the brain 
of the Horse with that of the Elephant, of the Sheep and Ox, 
of the Cat and Seal."* 

In the Marsupials "there is a great range of variation in 

the characters of the brain. The carnivorous Marsupials 

exhibit the lowest type of cerebral structure, the olfactory 

lobes being very large and completely exposed, while the 

cerebral hemispheres are comparatively small and quite 

smooth. In the Kangaroos, on the other hand, the cerebral 

hemispheres present numerous convolutions, and are much 

larger in proportion to the olfactory lobes which they cover." 

(Huxley.) The prominence of the olfactory lobes is itself 

an index of low cerebral development, for, as Prof. Morse 

notes f : 

" Cope refers to Gratiolet as showing that a great development of the 
olfactory is a character of an inferior type ; in fact, the more we ascend 
into a paleontological antiquity, the more we find that the olfactory lobes 
display a greater development in comparison with the cerebral hemi- 
spheres." 

The convoluted brain surface of the Kangaroos is in com- 

* " The Brain as an Organ of Mind." H. C. Bastian, p. 276. 
\ tl Presidential Address, Amer. Asso. Ad. Sci., 1887." 



136 Man's Belief in Immortality, 

plete accord with their superior susceptibilities and mental 
traits to the Opossum and Wombat. We may point to a 
possible explanation of this in the fact that their powers of 
movement are far more developed, and Spencer has drawn 
attention to the fact " that Sensorial Activity, and therefore 
Intelligent Discrimination, increases with an animal's power 
of Movement." (Bastian.) The wonderful velocity and grace- 
ful motion, for instance, of the Dolphins accompany their 
possession of a large brain, and one exceptionally plicated. 

In the placental mammals "the fore- brain or large brain 
is much more highly developed than in lower animals. The 
body (corpus collosum), which, like a bridge, connects the two 
hemispheres of the fore-brain, attains its full development 
only in placental animals ; in the pouched animals and clo- 
acal animals it exists merely as an insignificant rudiment." 
(Haeckel.) There is great variation in the brain parts of mam- 
mals, and while the deciduate, as a class, are higher than the 
indeciduate placental mammals, phenomenal developments or 
remarkably low characteristics change this relation. Thus the 
brain of the Hedgehog, itself a deciduate placental mammal, 
is very low in type, " the olfactory lobes are singularly large, 
and are wholly uncovered by the cerebral hemispheres which, 
on the other hand, do not extend back sufficiently far to hide 
any part of the cerebellum." (Huxley.) The convolutions of 
the brain surface are poorly represented by a few sulci. Con- 
trasting with this, the brain parts of a horse, a non-deciduate 
placental, exhibit numerous convolutions, as does that of a 
whale, though here also the cerebellum (the smaller brain) is 
largely uncovered. But, on the other hand, the elephant, dog, 
the Primates, and Man more than maintain the balance of 
cerebral superiority, and it may be suggested that, though 
the brains of the indeciduate mammals are highly convoluted,, 
they do not prefigure, in general proportion, the formal type 
of the highest mammalian brain so well as even the less 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 137 

folded organs of the higher groups.* However, it is impos- 
sible here, or elsewhere, to arrange the serial line of succes- 
sion in a linear direction, diversifications, and a, so to speak, 
biological scattering of organic impulses constantly fault 
such make-shift and narrow purposes. The general conclu- 
sion is irrefragable, however, that the brain type advances 
generally in harmony with the osteology and functions of 
animals, and the mental nature along with it, and when we 
reach the Apes, we see in these the prefiguration of those 
physical arrangements, juxtapositions, materials, and parts 
which, as far as this world is concerned, do hold, not make, 
the Soul of Man. 

The brain structure of Apes distinctly resembles that of 
man, and distinctions formerly made have been swept away 
with the progress of anatomical research. As Huxley has 
said : 

"It is admitted by every one of the long series of anatomists, who, of 
late years, have paid special attention to the arrangement of the compli- 
cated sulci and gyri which appear upon the surface of the cerebral hem- 
ispheres in man and the higher apes, that they are disposed after the very 
same pattern in him as in them. Every principal gyrus and sulcus of a 
chimpanzee's brain is clearly represented in that of a man, so that the 
terminology which applies to the one answers for the other. On this 
point there is no difference of opinion." f 

There are, however, differences of opinion as to the deter- 
minative value of differences in size, growth, and superficial 
variations of the brains of Apes and Man. But this is imma- 

* Prof. Owen has separated two types of brain convolutions, and desig- 
nated them as the " oblique " and " longitudinal," the " oblique pattern " 
being met with among the Ruminants, Solipedes, and Pachyderms ; the 
"longitudinal pattern " assigned principally to the Carnivoraand Cetacea. 
Dr. Bastian considers that a third arrangement of characteristic value is 
seen in the brains of the Quadrumana and in Man, which he describes 
as the "transverse." 

f Note on Resemblances and Differences in the Structure and the 
Development of the Brain in Man and Apes in " Descent of Man." 



138 Man's Belief in Immortality. 

terial. In the Apes, before we reach Man the nervous system 
in all its parts closely approaches the human form, and we 
should expect that in them also Mind would put on more 
characteristically human attributes. And on this point 
Darwin's remarks are forcible and trustworthy * : 

"It has, I think, now been shown that man and the higher animals 
especially the Primates, have some few instincts in common. All have the 
same senses, intuitions, and sensations, — similar passions, affections and 
emotions, even the more complex ones, such as jealousy, suspicion, emu- 
lation, gratitude, and magnanimity ; they practise deceit and are revenge- 
ful ; they are sometimes susceptible to ridicule, and even have a sense of 
humor ; they feel wonder and curiosity ; they possess the same faculties 
of imitation, attention, deliberation, choice, memory, imagination, the 
association of ideas, and reason, though in very different degrees. The 
individuals of the same species graduate in intellect from absolute imbecil- 
ity to high excellence." 

We have reviewed the succession of forms which lead by 
a series of "approximating and prophetic types from the lower 
groups of animal life up to man, and the structural modifica- 
tions which enlisted a larger presence of mind by better and 
more inviting accommodations in the nervous system. With- 
out laying any stress at present upon the conspicuous fact 
that the march of mental characteristics in animals lower 
than man involves in the closest way improvement of form 
and elaboration of nervous tissue as at least a necessary con- 
comitant, and before turning to an inspection of man in this 
relation, we are prompted to make an inquiry as to the phe- 
nomena of mind connected with this process of perfecting 
forms. 

And this work lies at our hands already furnished by Dr. 
Romanes in his admirable treatises, f where a very extended 
discussion of this subject is presented with a remarkable 
array of facts, analysis of terms, and psychological acumen. 

* "Descent of Man," Chap. III. 

f " Mental Evolution in Animals." "Animal Intelligence." G. J. 
Romanes 



The Genesis , Growth, and Durability of Mind. 139 

In the second of these works it is demonstrated that there is 
a mind in animals ; the first has reference to the growth and 
enlargement, and increasing amplitude of parts, space, rela- 
tions and activities as animal forms develop, and there is 
brought into prominence the serial accessions of mind to 
matter as forms and nervous tissues improve. 

We have adopted here as an evidence of mind the pres- 
ence of a nervous system, and assumed that with the growing 
complexity of the latter the former may be more and more 
predicated, and this in face of the fact that reflex actions, as 
Dr. Romanes says, " are not accompanied by consciousness, 
although the complexity of the neuro-muscular systems con- 
cerned in these actions may be very considerable." But our 
position is not invalidated by this fact, as a nervous organiza- 
tion which can sustain and initiate complex reflex motions, 
does also, as a fact, sustain and initiate complex mental 
motions. The compatibility of an organism with reflex 
action which is advanced implies its compatibility with men- 
tal action which is advanced ; and as nervous centres are 
created, as they are coordinated, and as they are brought 
under subjection to a few seats or one seat of nervous con- 
trol, reflex action and mental parts are simultaneously elabo- 
rated. Dr. Romanes, indeed, says * : 

' ; Mind then, so far as human experience extends, is only certainly known 
to occur in association with living organisms, and still more particularly 
in association with a peculiar kind of tissue which does not occur in all 
organisms, and, even in those in which it does occur, never constitutes 
more than an exceedingly small percentage of their bulk. This peculiar 
tissue so sparingly distributed through the animal kingdom, and present- 
ing the unique characteristics of being associated with mind, is, of course, 
the nervous tissue." And elsewhere he says : "I throughout take it for 
granted that the association of neurosis and psychosis is as invariable and 
precise as it would be were it proved to be due to a relation of causality." 

And again Dr. Romanes asserts the Physical Basis of 

* " Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 24. 



140 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

mind to be involved in the fact " that a nervous discharge 
having once taken place along a certain route, leaves behind 
it a molecular change more or less permanent, such that 
when another discharge afterwards proceeds along the same 
route, it finds, as it were, the footprints of its predecessor ; " 
and this is the physiological side of memory, which is " the 
most fundamental principle of mental operation." 

Dr. Romanes defines the Root Principle of Mind on its 
mental side to be choice — a power of any being to adjust 
itself to conditions for which its " nervous system does not 
furnish data for our prevision of what the adaptive action 
must necessarily be," and on its physiological side again as 
a " power of discriminating between stimuli, irrespective of 
their relative mechanical intensities." 

Dr Romanes points out the difficulty which this involves, 
that we find organisms which are unmistakably devoid of 
mentality, and on no intelligible hypothesis can claim it, as 
plants, do exhibit the objective characteristics of choice. 
That is, without any possible possession of a sense of Feel- 
ing, they do present motions indicative of choice.* Dr. 
Romanes says, in this connection : " Therefore it seems that 
my conception of what constitutes choice is in antagonism 
with my view that the essential element of Choice is found 
to occur among organisms which cannot properly be sup- 
posed to feel. And this antagonism or inherent contradic- 
tion is a real one, though I hold it to be unavoidable ; for 
it arises from the fact that neither Feeling nor Choice 
appears upon the scene of life suddenly. We cannot say 
within extensive limits where either can properly be said to 
begin. They both dawn gradually, and therefore in our 
every-day use of these terms we do not wait to consider 
where they are first applicable ; we only apply them where 
we see their applicability to be apparent." 

* Thus Drosera (the Sun-dew) responds to the stimulus of a weight of 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 141 

This dilemma seems entirely avoided if we assume that 
mental actions are solely involved, speaking physiologically, 
where nerve tissue exists, and that with the first differentia- 
tion of nerve tissue, mind or mental attitudes may be expected, 
viz., that nerve tissue is prognostic and diagnostic of mind. 
The discriminating action of a plant cannot be considered as 
Choice arising from Feeling, since in the plant nerve tissues 
are not known nor can be found. As Spencer serviceably 
says * : 

" The moment we rose to a type of creature which adjusts certain organic 
relations to relations of which both terms are not presented to its surface, 
we passed into adjustments of the psychological order. As soon as there 
exists a rudimentary eye capable of receiving an impression from a moving 
object about to strike the organism, and so rendering it possible for the 
organism to make some adapted movement, there is shown the dawn of 
actions we distinguish as intelligent. As soon as the organism, feebly 
sensitive to a jar or vibration propagated through its medium, contracts 
itself so as to be in less danger from the adjacent source ofdisturbance, 
we perceive a nascent form of the life classed as psychical." 

However, starting out from these rudimentary considera- 
tions, Dr. Romanes traces the growth, so to speak, of Mind in 
animal life, and has constructed a diagram which exhibits the 
results of his inquiry and "is, in all its parts, carefully 
drawn to a scale, the ascending grades or levels of which are 
everywhere determined by the evidence." He arranges the 
successive appearances of mental phenomena in animals 
under Emotion, Will, and Intellect, the three parts of Person- 
ality, as we assumed in Chap. II. Without stopping to 
examine the definition the author gives to Consciousness in 
its physiological counterpart, f or to explain the dependence 

hair, the tbIto part of a grain, and does not contract under the impact 
of raindrops relatively quite heavy. 

* "Principles of Psychology," §175. 

f It is Spencer's well-known and striking suggestion that Consciousness 
primordially arises with ganglionic friction, that nervous action without 
consciousness is quicker than nervous action with consciousness ; con- 



142 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

instituted in his treatise between sensation, pleasures and 
pains, memory, association of ideas, perception, imagination, 
emotions, reason, with his subordinate definitions, distinctions 
and philosophic analysis, all of which we can assume as 
entirely granted, by, first, their own intrinsic naturalness, 
and, secondly, by the assent of general writers ; without 
stopping to review these interesting observations, we shall 
turn at once to his results, which for our present purpose is 
all we need or can consider. 

Now these results, if they prove anything, prove that the 
phenomena, attributes, or products of Mind in its three several 
provinces of Will, Thought, and Emotion have appeared in 
greater and greater force, regarded quantitatively and quali- 
tatively, as the animal forms develop and culminate to their 
last stages of zoological completion. This serial involution of 
Mind is from the more simple to the more complex manifes- 
tations, from the least difficult to the more difficult. But 
further, it is from the least conscious to the more conscious, 
and this growth of consciousness is parallel to, commensurate 
with, and dependent on the greater or less establishment of 
Personality, or, in other words, on the greater or less presence 
of Volition, Thought and Emotion. This is of emphatic 
importance in our inquiry, and we will stop to point out its 
value and weight. 

Consciousness is a sense of existence, and can graduate in 
intensity all the way from a barely emergent feeling in a 
Medusa, up to a rich and composite realization of all his 
relations, social, physical and intellectual, in Man. This pre- 
supposes, or is tantamount to saying, that Consciousness 
becomes more intense as its amplitude of exercise increases, 
as it recognizes the products of more and more enlarged 
areas of Mind. And this assumption is in every way reen- 

sciousness itself being synchronous with impeded or delayed nervous 
response. 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 143 

forced upon investigation and study. The animal who dimly 
recognizes the outside world through a few undeveloped 
senses, must be less intensely conscious than the one who has 
highly-developed senses, a play of Memory, and wider scope 
for deduction. Consciousness in its intensity and in its cer- 
tainty is proportioned to the number and vividness of the crea- 
ture's points of contact with the outside world, and with, so 
to speak, its own subjective states. It is a statement of arith- 
metical simplicity that a sum made up of a great number of 
equivalent elements is larger than one made up of less; and 
if Consciousness is not a sum, it is a state whose permanency 
and character is dependent on the avenues of nervous or 
mental action by which it comes to the surface at all. 

This may be illustrated in the procession of sensations 
from nescience to complete consciousness in awakening from 
sleep or from a swoon. The first dim return to a realization 
of ourselves upon being spoken to or touched graduates into 
fuller and deeper recognition of our surroundings as more 
and more senses send their reports to the metropolis of the 
brain, and are again issued in the form of commands to the 
extremities, and more and more powerful impressions upon 
ear, eye, feeling, and smell or taste inform consciousness, and 
it, expanding to the periphery of our sentient being, is more 
and more aroused and intensified with each new or added 
stimulus, until we are completely awake and completely 
conscious. So with increasing mentality the organism comes 
into possession of more, deeper, and stronger consciousness, 
with more, deeper, and stronger impressions. It is, so to 
speak, an awakening of Mind in Matter from the somnolence 
and inertness of unconscious life to the totality of Conscious- 
ness in Man. Now an examination of Dr. Romanes' diagram 
and the chapters of his book show, as we already expect, 
that in animals Consciousness, arising in sensation, goes on 
enlarging as other " Mental Products " are formed, and we 



144 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

must believe this process of dilation is continued until all 
are formed. 

In the province of Intellect he presents the following table 
of conjoined mental grades and their zoological exponents : 

Consciousness, Nervous Adjustments,Coelenterata (Medusae). 

Pleasures and Pains, Memory, Echinodermata (Sea Urchins). 

Primary Instincts, Larvse of Insects, Worms. 

Association and Contiguity, Mollusca. 

Recognition of Offspring, Insects and Spiders. 

Association and Similarity, Fish and Batrachia. 

Reason, Higher Crustacea. 

Recognition of Persons, Reptiles and Cuttle-Fish. 

Communication of Ideas, Bees, Ants, etc. 
Recognition of Pictures, Dreaming, Birds. 

Understanding of Mechanisms, Carnivora, Rodents, Ruminants. 

Use of Tools, Monkeys and Elephants. 

Indefinite Morality, Anthropoid Apes and Dog. 

In the province of Emotion we find these parallel columns : 

Surprise, Fear, Larvae of Insects, Worms. 

Sexual Emotions without selection, Mollusca. 
Parental Affections, Social Feeling, 

Pugnacity, Insects and Spiders. 

Jealousy, Anger, Play, Fish and Batrachia. 

Affection, Higher Crustacea. 

Sympathy, Bees, Ants, etc. 

Emulation, Pride, Resentment, 

Taste, Terror, Birds. 

Grief, Hate, Cruelty, Benevolence, Carnivora, Rodents and Ruminants. 
Revenge, Rage, Monkeys and Elephants. 

Shame, Remorse, Deceitfulness, 

Ludicrous, Anthropoid Apes and Dog. 

In the province of Will we have varying phases of 
Volition not separated into graded steps by Dr. Romanes, 
though an act of will is presupposed in its simplest form by 
any act of Choice, and Choice is the comprehensive evidence 
of mind selected by Dr. Romanes to indicate mind at any 
time. 

Now with this accumulation of parts of Mind by which the 
subject is variously and increasingly aroused and stimulated, 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 145 

Consciousness variously and increasingly recognizes new 
forms and phases of existence. This evolution, or by our 
nomenclature involution, of mind continues until the Person- 
ality as we know it in Man is constructed, when Consciousness, 
now reporting the contents of Mind from all its various 
quarters, and in more and more intensity, suddenly realizes 
the Ego and reports it also. In this last phase it passes 
necessarily into Self-Consciousness and a Sense of Personal 
Identity. We have seen in Chap. II. that a Sense of Personal 
Identity implicated Consciousness ; we are now led to conceive 
that Consciousness is the root principle of any such Sense ; 
that as it first appears in the lowest organism, it predicts 
the climax of its evolution in the Ego, the basis of our indi- 
vidual hopes (scientifically considered) for temporal perma- 
nency. And this is evident because we found Consciousness 
increasing in intensity, as the elements of Personality became 
extended, and because we elsewhere (Chap. II.) assume Ego 
to be a functional product of Personality, and as a functional 
product decreases or increases with the decrease or increase 
of the ingredients it involves, so the Ego rises with the rise of 
the Personality as does Consciousness. But, observe, there is 
an instructive distinction to be drawn here between the Ego 
and mere Consciousness. The Ego does appear at some 
instant in the growth of Personality, perhaps before Mind has 
reached to the fulness of its growth in Man, or when it has, 
or after it has, we are not called upon to decide that point, 
but appears as a product. Consciousness, on the other hand, 
accompanies with equal step the growing mind until the 
Personality forms the Ego, when Consciousness eventuates 
into a Sense of Personal Identity. Hence we say Conscious- 
ness is the root principle of a Sense of Personal Identity, 
apprehending in all the lower forms of life an enlarging 
organic existence as these forms improve, and while Person- 
ality is yet immature or loosely or deficiently aggregated. 



146 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

Here we now have reached conclusions that enable us 
to answer the two inquiries with which we started, as to 
whether "the durability of mind itself, as individualized, is 
more and more certain as its elements are more and more 
strengthened," and whether " the Ego will come into greater 
or less statical control of mind as the Personality increases 
or decreases in intensity." To the first question the answer 
evidently is, that the durability of mind as individualized is 
only possible when Mind, through the growth of Personality, 
becomes self-assertive or the Ego emerges ; but that all 
phases of developing mind short of that point at which the 
Ego does appear are equally unsustained, uncentred, and 
ephemeral, whether it be Mind as in a Medusa, an Ant, or a 
Bird, assuming that the Ego appears in none of these animals. 
But we may say, as, of course, was already anticipated, that 
the durability of Mind considered as in an individual, is ren- 
dered more certain as its elements are strengthened, for this 
process of strengthening has c?'eated the Ego, itself the 
scientific or philosophic basis of any such expectation. 

And to the second the answer evidently is, that while there 
may be a partial Personality (see Chap. II., p. 87), there can 
be no partial Ego, but that, as we see Personality in all its 
parts approach such completion as to engender the Ego, so 
we may conclude that its further progress or elaboration will 
build up the Ego, and thus, (the Ego coming into greater 
statical control of mind) does render the durability of mind, 
as individualized, more certain. And while it was necessary, 
for the sake of valuable suggestions, and for a presentation 
of a certain logical scheme of ideas, to go through with this 
examination, it is only an unfolding of what was implied in 
the first assumption, that upon a Sense of Personal Identity 
man rested his hopes (philosophically or scientifically con- 
sidered) of a future life. 

It has been abundantly shown that the growth of the nerv- 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 147 

ous system and mind has been synchronous, that the imma- 
teriality of the latter has been engaged sympathetically in the 
processes of the former's material increase. And this might 
have been much further elucidated among mammals if we 
had brought forward the numerous modifications of the brain 
parts which appear in various animals, and seem conjunc- 
tional with different habits of life, special aptitudes, and zoo- 
logical grade.* 

We have also seen that this growth of Mind consisted in 
a development of its triple nature as Will, Feeling, and 
Thought, and that thus the Personality was built up, until, 
with the process perfected in Man, we anticipated finding the 
Ego as its functional product. Our study will then be com- 
pleted if we demonstrate the same inviolate union of Mind 
and Matter in Man, and the same evolution of Personality 
with the appearance in him of its inevitable result, the Ego, 
or Man's Personal Identity. 

And first, with regard to the close adhesion between mental 
traits and nervous or cranial organization, we believe that 
without entering extendedly into this inquiry the proof will 
be complete if first we examine to what extent superior men- 
tal endowments are associated with cranial mass, structure, 
or refinement and adjustment of tissue, and whether further 
mental improvement superinduces nervous elaboration and 
cell growth ; second, if we discover that disturbance or mal- 
formation of nervous organs precipitates pathological states 
of mind exactly equivalent to the lesion or distortion ob- 
served. 

That cranial mass and intricacy of brain structure (convo- 
lution of surface) are generally indicative of mental powers, is 
unquestioned ; but that this relation is invariable, is not at all 

* The reader may turn with profit for information on this topic to 
Chapters XVI. and XVII. in Dr. Bastian's ''The Brain as an Organ of 
Mind." 



148 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

proven. Nor could this be expected ; actual increase of dimen- 
sions and greater weight might arise and do from the devel- 
opment of connective tissue simply (neuroglia), from the cavi- 
ties of the brain becoming filled with serous fluid (in dementia 
or idiocy), from a connection between size of skull and there- 
fore weight of brain and stature of the individual, and from 
congestion of the brain with blood. But where such an ex- 
planation of greater weight of brains not associated with 
striking mental power or individual prominence of their pos- 
sessors is insufficient, as in certain data furnished by observ- 
ers, the third contingent determining the mere physiological 
excellence of the brain as an organ of mind must necessarily 
be regarded as explaining an anomaly, in itself impossible. 
That is, we must conclude that in such cases there are imper- 
fections in the refinement and adjustment of nerve tissue. 
On this point Dr. Maudsley speaks with convincing em- 
phasis * : 

' ' A second reason why there may be numerous and serious defects of 
nervous structure which cannot yet be discovered, is based upon the infi- 
nitely complex and exquisitely delicate structure of the cortical layers of 
the hemispheres. It must be confessed that many physical paths of nerv- 
ous function in the supreme centres may be actually obliterated without 
our being any the wiser, for it was only yesterday, so to speak, that men 
succeeded, after infinite patient research, in demonstrating a direct com- 
munication between the different nerve- cells and between nerve-fibres and 
cells. The obliteration of such a physical communication in the supreme 
centres might plainly render impossible a certain association of ideas or 
the transferrence of the activity of the idea to an out-going nerve-fibre — a 
particular function and expression of mind. The convolutions being 
formed of several delicate superimposed layers, it is natural to suspect 
that the defective intelligence of idiocy may be due to a defective develop- 
ment or to an entire absence of one or other of the higher of these layers, 
which may be presumed to minister to the more abstract functions of 
mind. 

" Thirdly, it must be admitted that, all question of defect of physical 
structure put aside, the extremest derangement of function may be due to 

* "Pathology of Mind." H. Maudsley, pp. 183, 184. 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 149 

chemical changes in the complex constitution of nerve-element, changes 
which, in the present state of knowledge, are still less discoverable than 
physical changes. Examine the cells of a man's brain at the end of a day 
of great mental activity, and at the beginning of a day after a good night's 
rest. What difference would be detectable ? None whatever ; yet the 
actual difference is between a decomposition and a recomposition of 
nerve-element — between a capacity and an incapacity of function." 

On the other hand, the evidence is satisfactory that brain 
weight and brain surface naturally testify to and accompany 
better minds. The brain weights of the lower races, the wild 
men and aboriginal denizens of continents prove this. Dr. 
Morton has tabulated some brain capacities of various races, 
and offers the following table as his result : 



Races, 


No. of Skulls. 


Mean Capacity. 


Largest. 


Smallest. 


Caucasian 

Mongolian 

Malay 


52 
IO 

18 

147 
29 


87 
83 
81 

82 

78 


109 

93 

89 

IOO 

94 


75 
69 
64 
60 
65 


American 

Ethiopian 



Dr. Bastian takes the following table from Le Bon 



Cranial Capacity, 
Cubic Centimetres. 



1,200 to 1,300 
1,300 to 1,400 
1,400 to 1,500 
1,500 to I,6oo 
1,600 to 1,700 
1,700 to 1,800 
1,800 to 1,900 



Modern 
Parisians. 



O.O 
IO.4 

14.3 

46.7 

16.9 

6.5 

5-2 



Parisians of 


Ancient 




the 12th Cen. 


Egyptians. 


Negroes. 


O.O 


O.O 


7-4 


7.5 


12. 1 


35-2 


37-3 


42.5 


33-4 


29.8 


36.4 


14.7 


20.9 


9.0 


9-3 


4-5 


O.O 


0.0 


0.0 


O.O 


0.0 



Austr'lians. 



45-0 
25.O 
20.0 

10.0 
0.0 
0.0 
0.0 



The brain weight of idiots and lunatics is, on the average, 
low, whether due to partial atrophy or congenital littleness; 
and where it is high, some of the considerations given above 
are to be adduced as explaining it, in fact, as veritably as- 
signed causes. The brain weight of monkeys, even of the 



150 Man's Belief in Immortality. 

highest anthropoid apes, is greatly below that of man. The 
gap which separates man from these in intelligence is aptly 
correlated by an enormous contrast in cranial capacity. When 
the human brain approximates to the size of that of the Go- 
rilla it is no longer adequate to express Human Intelligence, 
and thirty-seven ounces for the male brain has been desig- 
nated by Broca as the minimum size compatible with sanity 
and reason. Reversion to still lower animal cranial conditions 
have been recorded, as when the corpus collosum is absent and 
idiocy supervenes. The growth of human knowledge, the in- 
dustry of the human mind, the strides and speculations, acqui- 
sitions and inventions of human genius, seems to have in- 
creased brain stuff, for Broca has furnished evidence to prove 
" the greater cranial capacity of Parisians of the nineteenth as 
contrasted with those of the twelfth century." (Bastian.) An 
interesting contribution to the relation of brain weight and 
mental calibre was made by Dr. Gustave Le Bon,* which is 
of value in this connection. He stated there " that the 
female brain is not only less in weight than that of man, but 
that this inferiority exists ' a age egal, a poids egal et a taille 
egale,' and that the cranial differences between the sexes are 
greater among the cultivated and more highly developed races 
than among those in the most primitive condition, which he 
ascribes to the fact that the mental activity of civilized society 
is conducted in the aggregate by the male sex " (Nature). 
Idiots with little heads (microcephalic) frequently exhibit 
a type of brains characteristic of brutes, as where the 
little brain (Cerebellum) is only half covered by the large 
brain (Cerebrum); and Mr. Marshall, in an often-quoted de- 
scription of the brains of two idiots of European descent, 
said, " In this respect the idiots' brains are even more simple 
than the brain of the gibbon, and approach that of the ba- 
boon and sapajou." 

* Revue d'Anthropologie, Jan., 1879. 



The Genesis, Grotvtk, and Durability of Mind. 1 5 1 

When we examine the relations of brain surface produced 
by complexities of folding (convolution) with mind power, 
the antithesis of mental preeminence with a material confor- 
mation of nervous tissue is far more striking. In the brains 
of idiots and imbeciles, as in the lower races and among 
apes, the surface of the cerebral hemispheres is compara- 
tively smooth, or there is a regularity and simplicity of fold- 
ing very different from the complications, duplications, and 
wealth of convolutions and sulci seen in the brains of the 
higher races or the more eminent thinkers. This is the 
general result of comparative study, but it is not an invaria- 
ble association. Brains of unknown men or of those with a 
limited or local reputation display marked intricacy of con- 
volutions, but these exceptions are less frequent than in- the 
case of simple brain weight ; and when they occur, we may 
confidently conclude that either, as Bastian suggests, in many 
such instances the "natural aptitudes and potencies " of the 
brain have not been evoked, " for want of the proper stimuli 
and practice capable of perfecting the development and 
functional activity of these regions of the brain," or that these 
plicated brains yet lack those internal and finer adjustments 
which are almost intangible, and depend as much, perhaps, 
upon chemical composition and capillary division as struc- 
tural mass. On this point, however, Topinard speaks with 
certainty, saying * : 

" A convolution would be rectilinear in a subject of tolerable intelli- 
gence, as in the patient of Blcetre, whose brain we have now before us. In 
another subject of superior intelligence it would be tortuous, double, and 
altered in form by the pressure of neighboring redundant convolutions. 
The sulci would be hidden, and the anastomosis between one convolution 
and another, in a rudimentary state in the former, while in the latter it 
would be considerable, and would cause a change in the configuration of 
the primary convolution. This, which is called the richness of the con 
volutions, that is to say, their development in number and tortuosity, 
causes not only an absolute increase in the quantity of these convolutions 

* "Anthropology." P. Topinard, p. 106. 



152 Man's Belief in Immortality, 

but also a reduction in size of each of them, taken singly. Large and 
simple convolutions are thus a sign of idiocy, or of weak intellect in any 
race. Small convolutions with numerous foldings are a sign of large 
intellectual capacity." * 

And Dr. Romanes writes with unmistakable emphasis : f 

" Throughout the vertebrated series of animals the convolutions of the 
brain — which are the coarse expressions of more refined complexities of 
cerebral structure — furnish a wonderfully good general indication of the 
level of intelligence attained ; while in the case of ants, Dujardin says 
that the degree of intelligence exhibited stands in an inverse proportion 
to the amount of cortical substance, or in direct proportion to the amount 
of the peduncular bodies and tubercles. " 

The third element of our evidence as to the close align- 
ment of Mind with. Matter in the brain of Man is its internal 
structure, the arrangement of commissures, the number of 
cells, the constituents of cells, their size, the quantity of gray 
matter and functional relations of parts. In this vast and 
obscure department of research, where conjecture takes the 
place of proof and the extent of scientific experiment seems 
only to remove the horizon of possibilities to yet further 
unattainable limits, facts are necessarily debatable and equiv- 
ocal. Yet it is very evident that the brain has a very 
elaborate structure, that its elements of composition are 
numerous and delicate, that the mechanical perfection of 
this remarkable organ must depend upon their proper 
arrangement and healthiness, and hence that a series of con- 
ditions outside of mere brain weight and brain surface must 
determine mental factors. This all relates, to use the lan- 
guage of Luys,J to " a fixed anatomical element — an ultimate 

* It may be well to note here that the brain of Turgueneff , the distin- 
guished Russian novelist, though very large, was quite symmetrical, and 
provided with large convolutions, not usually a sign of intellectual en- 
dowment. 

f " Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 46. 

% " The Brain and its Functions." J. Luys. 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 153 

morphological unit. This is the nerve cell, with its various 
attributes and definite configuration, its nerve fibres, connec- 
tive tissue, and capillaries." Indeed in this direction we 
may hope to find in the future the most certain connections 
between brain substance and mind growth if, as Dr. S. V. 
Clevenger says, " it is folly to attach psychological impor- 
tance to the number and intricacy of folds in animals' 
brains." He would put the index of mental potency upon 
the nerve-cell, that mysterious nucleus whose fibrating and 
active atoms bring into objective manifestation the temper- 
ament and the acts of mind. 

Nervous matter is of two kinds,* the white or fibrous and 
the gray or vesicular, which differ in chemical constitution 
and physical structure. The percentage of water varies in 
both, being slightly more in the gray than in the white. 
The chemical ingredients of the nerve cells and nerve fila- 
ments also vary in the two classes of tissue, and are intrinsi- 
cally obscure and difficult of determination. They may be 
divided into two groups — non-phosphorized and phosphorized 
bodies ; the former are nitrogenous, organic aggregates con- 
taining carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, with some min- 
eral matter, and the latter are complex phosphorized fats, of 
which Ladd says : " It is doubtless true that the highly elabo- 
rate and unstable compounds containing phosphorus, which 
enter into the composition of nervous matter, have a signifi- 
cance for physiological and psychological researches such as 
belongs to no other material bodies." However imperfect 
or unsatisfactory may be the specific results of chemical 
analysis, it is obvious that the range of physico-chemical 
activity is extended, and that, whatever may be the formulae 
expressive of their connection, the elision or restriction of 
phases of that activity would seriously retard the appearance 

* The few paragraphs relating to nerve elements are compiled from 
Prof. G. T. Ladd's comprehensive work, " Physiological Psychology." 



154 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

of mind, while its more intense states must promote the 
latter's objective manifestations.* 

Besides the nerve cells proper is a granular mass called 
nerve cement {neuroglia), which it has been thought was the 
raw material of nerve tissue from which, under the influence 
of education, experience and thought, the available extent of 
nerve surface was enlarged and new additions of organized 
matter brought within the focus of mental influences. Then 
the nerve cells proper themselves present a series of more or 
less contrasted forms and magnitudes varying "all the way 
from the naked, or almost naked, nucleus to the large gan- 
glion cell with its many processes and complex microscopic 
structure." The nerve fibres are gathered together in bun- 
dles enclosed in a single sheath, and as they pass outward from 
the central organs they disband into their constituent threads 
until a single nervous element remains ; they are separated 
into medullated (peculiar to vertebrates) and non-medullated 
fibres, and are characterized by some complexity of structure. 
Upon their perfection their disentangled and fluent action, 
we may also assume, depends largely the instantaneity and 
qualitative character of sensations and of mental impres- 
sions. 

When we turn to the internal structure of the brain we find 
that it is composed of the white matter which makes up its 
mass enclosed in the gray matter, which has an average thick- 
ness of one-quarter of an inch "continuous over the whole 
external surface of the Hemisphere ; " that this gray matter 
has a greater depth over the frontal and parietal than over 

* Luys, quoting Byasson, says: "He (Byassorj) estimated exactly the 
quantity of phosphates and sulphates which entered into his diet, and also 
the quantity excreted. At the end of a certain time, these fundamental 
data having been ascertained, he began to work his brain, and in pro- 
portion to the amount of his work, the diet remaining constant, the 
quantity of sulphates and phosphates excreted by the urine had increased 
in a notable manner." 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind, 155 

the occipital convolutions, while its specific gravity is higher 
in the latter than in the former positions. (Bastian.) Bundles 
of fibres described by Lockhart Clarke rise from the central 
white matter, and passing outward with gradual diminishment 
of size, lose filaments along their course to contiguous nerve 
cells, and finally upon the surface become a reticulum of 
fibres in direct continuity with the thin and vascular membrane 
which covers the brain. In the convolution layers, nerve ele- 
ments graduate from a fine grained texture through a small- 
celled tract to those with larger cells and with varying 
shapes, and of these Bevan Lewis, as quoted by Dr. Bastian, 
says : " It is in the essential character of the individual cells of 
these layers, in the relationship of these anatomical units, the 
one to the other, and in their general distribution, that we 
detect divergence from the type normal to the higher mam- 
malia." The same writer says that peculiar globose cells with 
few connecting processes are found in the Pig and Sheep, 
and among men only in the brain of Idiots or Imbeciles. 

These cells with their latent powers of molecular energy 
are connected by systems of nerve threads, the commissures 
of the brain by which areas are brought into united action, 
the totality of impressions fused into the organic feeling of 
oneness, and our own conscious identity built up upon the 
accordant reciprocity and harmony of all the cerebral centres. 

These commissures of the brain consist in general of, first, 
the great Corpus Collosum, which unites the two hemispheres 
of the cerebrum. This is a complex bed of connecting fibres 
uniting similar convolutions in both hemispheres. Then 
there is, besides, the Centre or Middle and Posterior commis- 
sures, the Fornix and the Cerebellar Peduncles. The Cere- 
bellum has also its commissures and its characteristic ultimate 
structure of nerve substance. Without discussing these, 
which we are not in any way capable of doing, and as so 
much remains to be learned about their office and mission, it 



156 Mans Belief in Immortality, 

is evident that profitable mental action must be greatly 
dependent upon their existence and functional integrity. 
The bilateral symmetry of the brain, whereby the two hemi- 
spheres are made separate regions for origination of ideas, 
and for sensory impressions, require mutual union to insure 
simultaneous responses, unified sensations and consistent and 
forcible action. And this equable diffusion of similar phases 
of mind over the entire cerebral organization is secured by 
these myriad lines of telegraph, which maintain the balance 
of conditions in either half of the brain unimpaired and un- 
disturbed. There is reason for believing that in the absence 
of such unanimous action of the cerebral hemispheres a sort 
of dual Consciousness ensues when discordant and hostile 
lines of ideas, emotions, and volitions are started, leading to a 
chaos of Mind, a baffled and disordered reason. 

The quickness and accuracy of thought, the emotional in- 
tensity of feeling, the punctual and vigorous assertion of will, 
may naturally be dependent upon the thoroughness and per- 
fection of cerebral intercommunication.* 

Finally, in this section we may adduce, in further illustra- 
tion of the fixedness of the dependence of Mind on organized 
Matter for its objective display, the almost startling investi- 
gations of Fritsch, Hitzig, and Ferrier into the" localization 
of function," whereby certain regions, or aspects of the brain, 
become the sedes prima, or points of inception of sensations 
and of ideation. In a general sense such localization is 
acknowledged and accepted, as that the frontal convolutions 
are mainly the seat of intellectual processes ; but the more 
especial restriction of this or that sensation, this or that 

* It is true that there have been known examples of brains with one 
atrophied or damaged hemisphere, but in all such cases where psychical 
sanity remains, and even bilateral sensory impressions, as in hearing and 
seeing, retained, we may conceive that the cranial functions lack the vivid- 
ness, fulness, and depth of mnemonic recall, that characterize the same 
functions, with both hemispheres normally developed. 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 157 

function of Mind, to special and, so to speak, topographically 
limited spots, has been adversely criticised.* But at the 
same time the general and indubitable significance of these 
researches cannot be impeached ; there are spaces of nerve 
tissue from which emanate mental products of special sorts, 
and though, by a sort of recuperative substitution, in the case 
of their destruction other centres may become their functional 
representatives, yet as a matter of fact they exist in either 
case, whether original or secondary. 

Dr. Bastian's conclusions on this head are well expressed, 
and, we should think, quite within the limits of the truth. 
He says : 

" The Cerebral Cortex is, in our view, to be regarded as a continuous 
aggregation of interlaced ' centres ' toward which ingoing Impressions of 
all kinds converge from various parts of the body : here they come into 
relation with one another in various ways, and conjointly give rise to nerve 
actions which have for their subjective correlatives all the Sensations, and 
Perceptions, all the Intellectual, and all the Emotional Processes which 
the individual is capable of experiencing." 

The converse of these facts that show that the shape, size 
and contents of the nervous tissue are indices of mind, would 
be another set of facts showing that injury or disease in the 
nerve tissues impairs, and healthfulness and benign conditions 
stimulate the mind. And to cite these is only perplexing, by 
reason of their great multiplicity. We shall crowd a series 
of such facts into a rapid review. 

Derange the nerves in the most simple manner, as by insuf- 
ficient supply of blood, and the Mind cannot think, or at least 
does not; "torpor, confusion of thought, depression, and irrita- 
bility " (Maudsley) ensue ; rapid blood supply to the brain, as 
in fevers, sometimes disperses the feebleness of insanity and 
lunacy ; after decapitation, the head of a dog whose nervous 
tissues were fed by injections of defibrinated blood revived, 

* For an exhaustive description of the experiments of Dr. Ferrier, see 
" The Functions of the Brain." (D. Ferrier.) 



158 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

and "afforded ephemeral manifestations of a conscious per- 
ception of external things" (Luys); poisons in the blood, 
as alcohol, opium, belladonna, Indian hemp, derange the 
cerebral centres ; waste tissues in the blood provoke melan- 
choly and delirium ; excitement of mind determines an extra 
flow of blood to the head ; mental work requires a certain 
temperature of the brain, without which it fails to appear ; 
compression of the brain produces hallucinations, ravings, 
emotional frenzy ; fracture of the skull has been succeeded 
by a change in temper and disposition (Maudsley); disease 
of the envelopes of the brain affects it, and causes mental 
disease ; tumors in the brain produce the most violent 
and singular symptoms, blindness, deafness, mania, illu- 
sions, apparitions ; morbid appearances of the brain and mem- 
branes accompany mental diseases and distinguish them ; 
severed nerves destroy the special senses ; rapidity of men- 
tal action varies with mood and physical states ; nervous 
exhaustion prohibits thought, banishes memory, releases 
imagination, overthrows sense ; after acute mania, " the pia 
mater (brain-covering membrane) was strongly injected, the 
arachnoid (brain-covering membrane) was clouded like glass 
that has been breathed upon, and streaked with a delicate 
milky opacity along the lines of the vessels," etc. (Mauds- 
ley); in chronic insanity, there is thickening and opacity 
of the arachnoid, atroph}?- of the brain, discoloration and 
hardening of the white matter ; microscopic examinations of 
the brain after insanity show morbid changes in the nerve 
elements ; these are various and striking, but differences of 
opinion naturally prevail as to their significance ; yet there is 
no doubt or conflict whatever as to the reality of the vital 
relations between these morbid appearances and the mental 
derangement ; as deterioration of nerve tissue progresses, we 
see individuals thus affected quite incapable of registering 
present impressions, preserving no remembrance of what passes 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 1 59 

around them, forgetting the past, and becoming more and 
more incapable of expressing their sentiments and wishes in 
consequence of the progressive wearing out of the organic 
apparatuses that serve for the evolution of the processes of 
memory." (Luys.) After these facts, there can be no valu- 
able objections made against the idea conveyed mostsweep- 
ingly in the proposition of Dr. Maudsley : " I hold it to be 
true that every special character which is displayed outwardly 
is represented inwardly, in the nerve centres — that it is the 
outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible constitution 
of nerve structure." Prof. Bain wisely insists "that the con- 
nection of Mind and Body is not occasional or partial, but 
thorough-going and complete." * 

Again, a wide group of facts illustrates the influence of the 
Mind upon the Body, that the disturbances of the mental 
agent disorder the physical functions, and are delicately re- 
sponded to by nervous disorganization,! while mental health 
energizes and vivifies them. Yet, so far as the position 
adopted in this treatise is concerned, no concessions seem 
made in these facts to even the slightest claims of materialism ; 
the Mind may remain separated toto coelo in nature from the 
matter, from which it is yet nevertheless never separated in 
place. The mind may still inaugurate its own action, pass to 
the education and development of its own members, sway 
the current of its own vehemence, and may dominate and 
transform the body which it animates. The union of mind 
and body, and that there is no knowledge of the former 
without the latter, are scientific facts, and such as either 
Idealism or Materialism are at liberty to explain. As a 
writer in the Edinburgh Review has said : " Biology asserts 
just as strongly as Metaphysics that by means of inherited 

*" Mind and Body," p. 6. 

f The apparent emancipation of the Mind from the Body in the lives 
of the Martyrs, etc., in no sense contradicts these statements. 



160 Man's Belief in Immortality. 

aptitudes and transmitted intelligence, a man's mind does not 
passively reflect, but actively transforms the impressions it 
receives. The further question remains, whether the mind is 
in its essential activity sui generis, and independent, or only a 
part of nature in the widest sense. Idealism asserts the 
first, Materialism the second." Indeed, as Prof. Ladd says * : 

" The affirmation of a causal influence of the brain on the mind does not 
really work any prejudice to the claims of the mind to be considered a real 
being, or to be spiritual and free. For the sole account or cause of the 
mind's activities can, in no instance, be found in the molecular condition 
and changes of the brain. The simplest sensation must be referred also 
to the nature of the mind as its cause. It must be considered, not simply 
as caused by a certain form of nerve commotion in the cerebral cortex, but 
also as a psychical activity put forth by the being called mind." 

We must now inspect the growth of Personality in Man, as 
his Brain and Body grows, with the erection of the Ego as its 
functional product. The appearance of Mind in children 
must be conditioned upon the same objective physiological 
antecedents and accompaniments which prescribe its appear- 
ance in the rest of the animal world, viz., the presence, 
growth, and excitation of a nervous organization. And we 
are compelled to conclude that, if so, within a narrow range 
of susceptibilities and motor power, the foetal babe is pos- 
sessed of the attributes of a mental agent, restrictedly evoked 
indeed, and assuming the aspect of a half-awakened con- 
sciousness in the midst of benign and serene influences within 
the maternal womb. Luys says : f "In the first phases of 
foetal life it is very difficult to fix definitely at what epoch 
sensibility manifests itself as a motor force ; nevertheless, 
from the fourth month we can observe that the nervous sys- 
tem begins to react, and to reveal the vitality of the different 
apparatuses of which it is made up." And E. Perez, \ sum- 

* " Physiological Psychology," p. 661. 

f "The Brain and its Functions." J. Luys, p. 126. 

% "The First Three Years of Childhood." E. Perez, p. 7. 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 161 

ming up the observations of psychologists on this difficult 
theme, says: " For the present, however, we may fairly assume 
from analogy that for a long time before it is born a child 
will have become acquainted both with pain and pleasure, in 
so far, i. e., as its gradually developing organs have allowed 
the passage of the impressions which normally produce these 
sensations. It will also have experienced a great number 
of lesser sensations, which, though they may have been 
almost indifferent to it, will nevertheless have had some sort 
of echo in its already formed consciousness." 

When the human infant enters the world, he undergoes an 
abrupt and startling change. He is plunged into the midst 
of new conditions, contrasting strongly with those in which 
he has matured, and the shock of transition is accompanied 
with sudden demands upon his organism which he has never 
felt before. He must breathe the new atmosphere which 
envelopes him, and start into action the elaborate machinery 
of respiration. His sustenance is provided for by a nerve 
avenue, and a set of muscles of elaborate range of coordi- 
nation must be brought into play to secure it, a digestive 
apparatus of excessive sensitivity is put in motion for its 
reception, and the organs of sanitation, secretion, and re- 
moval are summoned to assist the processes of its assimila- 
tion. His senses are rudely attacked, as Perez says, " are 
battered by repeated shocks of strange impressions ; " changes 
of temperature, waves of light, pulsations of sounds, odors 
and currents of shifting aromas, the taste of his food, all 
encompass him with multifarious appeals, startling his slum- 
bering or scarcely conscious senses, threading their ways 
along lines of nervous communications scarcely before used 
to that Sensorium of the Brain whose parts are thus strangely 
awakened, while the physiological aspect of Mental Life be- 
gins its obscure and marvellous course. The infant suffers 
upon entering the world, and he cries out in instinctive pro- 
ii 



162 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

test against its abuse. Pleasure follows, and the reassuring 
embrace of its mother, the satiety of plentiful nourishment, 
the sweetness of sleep, assuage its discomfort. Pain and 
Pleasure enter thus its first experiences in life, and its emo- 
tional nature is evoked under their influence, while the 
Senses, some of which are yet closed, are already beginning 
to store the nervous fabric with impressions by which Mem- 
ory is initiated, Perceptions formed, Judgment and Imagi- 
nation aroused. 

The infant begins its mental evolution with recording in 
its nervous framework the impressions made upon it by the 
surrounding media; its sight, hearing, taste, feeling, smell, are 
all awakened, and that muscular sense, or, as it has been 
called, the kinosesthetic sense, by which the continuity of 
physical parts, the realization of muscular well-being, is rec- 
ognized, is repeatedly impressed. As the zoologists see in 
the development of the ovum to the completed infant a series 
of phases repeating in an ontogeny the phylogeny of zoo- 
logical forms, so the psychologist sees in the unfolding 
mental life of the child a series of phases suggestive of, and 
similar to, the successive aspects of mentality which from the 
lowest forms of life to the highest compose a climbing scale, 
disjointed, indeed, erratic, and variously modified. They 
also see in the human infant that the development passes 
quickly beyond these animal exhibitions, and that it soon 
points to a deeper indwelling of mind ; that the functions of 
mind present stronger, more complex, more intricate * phe- 
nomena. And this is anticipated in the presence of a better 

* Cherbuliez, in a piquant and suggestive sketch, " La Bete," indicates 
wittily this aspect of the human mind: " La bete ararement deux idees a la 
fois, un clou chasse l'autre. L'homme a la dangereuse faculte de combiner 
les sentiments contraires, sans que le plus fort tue le plus faible ; il est le 
seul etre capable de porter en lui et de supporter quelque temps des con- 
tradictions irreconcilables. II en souffre souvent ; parfois aussi il en 
meurt." 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 163 

and more highly organized brain, whose enlargement is car- 
ried far beyond the maximum limits of the brute creation, 
compelling the super induction of Mind within its delicate and 
elaborate material tissues to a more intense and manifold 
degree than in animals. Now this superinduction is an im- 
portant question. If a fact, as we think scientific inference 
allows us to assume it is, it rests upon analogous physiologi- 
cal phases in the development of the human creature to those 
exhibited in the zoological series of animals in their extent, 
and upon analogous psychological phases appearing pari 
passu with the former, both in the animal and in the human 
infant. This, expressed at greater length and more clearly, is 
this. As we have reviewed the rise of the nervous system in 
the graded and ascending series of animal forms we have 
found, as we would expect, on the ground that mind main- 
tains an equivalency in its quantity with the nervous adjust- 
ments, that the mental products increase along with the 
growing preponderance of cerebral or nervous complexity. 
This increase of mind is not, cannot be, a development of 
mental germs in the lower forms carried upward in the 
higher. It would be a violent view and very strained to 
assume that the mind shown in a Medusa, which is barely 
apparent, has unfolded through genetic connections into the 
mind of a Termite or a Baltimore Oriole. It is in all ways 
more reasonable, and we believe will be found generally more 
convenient and acceptable, to say, as we have again and again 
suggested (ante), that Mind is invoked from some source 
outside of matter, and as its residence in matter is made or 
becomes habitable for its larger uses, it enters material organ- 
isms as they advance in greater and greater degree. In other 
words, Mind becomes attached more and more to form, dis- 
plays itself more and more in theni as they advance. This 
must be the case in the human infant also, or at least human 
embryology predisposes Science to take this view, and cer- 



164 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

tainly before the infant is born the development of mind 
follows naturally the course we find it takes in animals, and 
increases as the infant increases, and his brain organ grows 
and is elaborated. If we penetrate the secrets of human 
embryology this development of mind in the elaborated 
structures that reach in a series from an ovum to a man-child 
follows the development of mind in animals, as in the series 
Gastrula, Worm, Fish, Reptile, and Mammal. 

That this is, in a broad and yet true sense, a reality, is 
recognized by Dr. Romanes, who in his diagram showing 
what he calls the Evolution of Mind in Animals, places the 
human infant at various ages on the same lines that exhibit 
the mental condition of certain groups of animals. This 
lesson from fcetal development is most striking, indeed un- 
answerable, no matter what hypothesis we adopt in regard to 
human birth or descent, providing only we regard nature 
throughout as a consistent and harmonious whole, and not 
an artificial and warring jumble of disparate parts, opposite 
tendencies and irreconcilable laws. 

Now, as we have seen in a brief but adequate review, that 
Mind is associated with the nervous system, and that we have 
felt justified in assuming that where there is a nervous system 
there is some phenomena of mind, and have made indeed the 
former an index of the latter, let us look at the development 
of the human nervous system as displayed by its embryology. 
We shall find the nervous system in stages of growth equiv- 
alent to its stages in lower groups of animals, and we are 
driven to conclude de re ipse that mind is present at these 
stages in such measure as it is present in those lower groups 
of animals at the same stages. If all we have gone over so 
far in the last and present chapter is true, and it embodies the 
fundamental conception of zoological science, then this con- 
clusion is simply unassailable. 

Now what are the facts in this matter of the growth of the 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 165 

nervous system of man ? Prof. Packard says,* and his resume 
must suffice here as final for our purpose : '* In giving our 
summary of the life-history of man, we will enter a little more 
in detail than in the other vertebrates. It will be seen that 
the embryonic life of man is almost an epitome of the animal 
kingdom, beginning with characters common to the moners 
and the worms and ending with the vertebrates. The stages 
which he passes through are, then, as follows : 

" 1. A minute mass of protoplasm like a moner. 

" 2. Egg stage. 

" 3. Morula stage. 

" 4. A suppressed gastrula stage (?) at least a two-layered 
sack. 

" 5. Ascidian stage, with noto -chord. 

" 6. Amphioxus stage, having no brain or skull but with 
gill slits. 

" 7. Fish stage, with brain and skull. 

" 8. Reptile stage, having an amnion and allantois. 

" 9. Mammal stage, with a placenta. 

" 10. Quadrumanous stage, like the tailless apes. 

" 11. Man." 

Now while it is quite evident that the human embryo has 
not, in its fabrications of tissues and parts, put on the appear- 
ances with any exactitude of all the lower groups of animals, 
yet it has passed through phases in nervous grade at least 
representative of all of them ; in other words, according to our 
postulate, reiterated so often, that mind and nervous structure 
advance together, the human organism, from the fcetal germ 
to the developed Person has passed through the ??iental phases 
of all creation, where Mind is to be found, up to its own dis- 
tinctive and preeminent do??iain. 

In the successively higher forms of animals, Mind appears 

* "Life Histories of Animals, including Man, or Outlines of Comparative 
Embryology." A. S. Packard, Jr., p. 239. 



1 66 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

in concomitancy with adequate nerve arrangements, and must 
come in from outside, and therefore, also, these nerve arrange- 
ments reproduced in human embryology and in the infant 
development assimilate Mind from outside in proportion to 
their power to hold or express it. As, then, we assumed that 
in Personal Identity, in the fact of the Individual the possi- 
bility of human permanence, or any other permanence, after 
this life inheres, and as we also placed in Mind this possi- 
bility — Personal Identity or the Ego being only an expression 
of a certain accumulation and force of mind (the completed 
Personality) — so then in the human organism where that 
Ego has not been attained, as in animals where it has not 
been developed, there can be no hope of Immortality, and 
the imprisoned mind disappears into the outside whence it 
came, and leaves no trace behind. 

Thus we see, in answer to our inquiries, that Mind, up to 
the point of individuality, is continually applied from outside 
(whatever or wherever that may be made to mean); or, that 
it is a germ developed by increments added to it, not begotten 
in it; and this view, as we said above, "will be found 
generally more convenient and acceptable." As Dr. Harris 
writes,* " It is not good reasoning that there is nothing in a 
mature man which was not in the ovum at its impregnation. 
If the physical organization of man was evolved from an as- 
cidian , and the ascidian itself from inorganic matter, it is not 
good reasoning that there is nothing in the mature man which 
was not in the ascidian, and in the inorganic matter from 
which the ascidian was evolved." 

The problem of Heredity offers no difficulties to this 
assumption. Inherited character and traits and faculties 
simply imply that those nervous combinations, interlacings, 
storings, components, and areas which were in the parents are 

* " Philosophical Basis of Theism." S. Harris, p. 491. 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 167 

reproduced in the progeny, and hence the same products 
of Mentality insert themselves in the children which were 
seen in the progenitors. * But the individual created, as Fer- 
rier would say, Mind in the elements of Personality so 
strengthened as to make the Ego, then this extraneous ap- 
plication ceases, and the mind centred, as it were, in flesh, 
becomes a feeding and growing and multiformly accretive 
creature. And when does the Ego, the Personal Identity 
appear ? It is a critical question, for ex hypothesi those who 
die before it is evolved have not become individuals (psycho- 
logically), and hence can neither claim nor expect a future 
life as individuals. 

Without answering the question in a specific manner, we 
can assert that, at least with the human organism, there, is no 
individuality before birth, and, for some time, none after it. 
As Prof. Ferrier has said, " It " — the human being before 
Self-Consciousness is developed — " cannot be said to be with- 
out 'mind,' if by the attribution of 'mind ' to it, we mean that 
it is subject to various sensations, passions, desires, etc. ; but 
it certainly is without consciousness (self-consciousness), or 
that notion of self, that realization of its own personality 

* This receives corroboration from the phenomena of Atavism or 
Reversion, where children unexpectedly resemble a long dead ancestor. 
Through some physiological freak, coincidence, or accident, the nervous 
organization of those predecessors is reproduced and with it their peculiar- 
ities. The phenomena of Spontaneity and what is called Heredity of 
Influence do not seem to be inexplicable on this assumption; indeed by it 
are made more tractable to scientific treatment. This view, or something 
like it, has been recognized and appreciated by students of Heredity. 
Ribot says : " The Hereditary transmission of mental faculties — considered 
in its phenomena, its laws, its consequences, and especially in its causes — 
is so closely connected with physiological heredity that we are compelled 
to consider this latter subject at the outset ;" and again : "Heredity 
regulates the proportions of the nervous system. It is evident in the 
general dimensions of the brain, the principal organ of that system ; it is 
very often apparent in the size, and even in the form, of the cerebral 
convolutions." 



1 68 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

which, in the subsequent stages of its own existence, accom- 
panies these modifications of its being." 

This time varies with each example examined, depending 
on special mental aptitudes, on strength, and quickness of 
mental nature. Thus in some children the elements of Per- 
sonality seem sufficiently unfolded to produce the conscious 
Ego (and Consciousness is the indubitable evidence of its at- 
tainment) at a tender age. So Perez says : * " The concrete 
notion of personality which succeeds the primitive sentiment 
of this personality seems to me already completely formed 
when the child begins to express his thoughts. . . . And 
when the child learns to say / or me instead of Charles or 
Paul, the terms / or me are not more abstract to him than 
the proper names which he has been taught to replace by / 
or me" Dr. Jastrow remarks : f " That the critical period 
from the fifth to the seventh year, corresponds with what 
many authorities regard as the extreme age at which loss of 
hearing will cause deaf -mutism, and with the. age at which one 
begins to remember sufficiently of one's self to mark it as the be- 
ginning of one 's personal consciousness" Richter describes his 
realization of himself in language which certainly is inter- 
esting. J (Carlyle's Essays, " Jean Paul Friedrich Richter 
Again.") That this Sense of Personal Identity is slowly 
brought into action- with the approach of the Identity it 
recognizes, is generally appreciated. Luys says : § " During 

* " First Three Years of Childhood." E. Perez, p. 282. 

f " Dreams of the Blind, and the Centres of Sight." (Abstract.) A. 
A. A. Sci., Vol. XXXV., p. 274. 

% " Never shall I forget that inward occurrence, till now narrated to no 
mortal, wherein I witnessed the birth of my Self-Consciousness, of which 
I can still give the place and time. One forenoon I was standing, a very 
young child, in the outer door, and looking leftward at the stack of fuel- 
wood, when, all at once, the internal vision — 1 am a Me — came like a 
flash from heaven before me, and in gleaming light ever afterward con- 
tinued ; then had my Me for the first time seen itself and forever." 

§ ." The Brain and Its Functions." J. Luys, p. 238. 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability cf Mind. 169 

the first period of the life of the infant it is vague, indefinite, 
and as confused as the organic machinery which produced 
it." And, again, Prof. Ferrier says : * " Consciousness, no 
doubt, keeps ever gaining in distinctness, but there is cer- 
tainly a period when it is an absolute blank, and then there 
is an epoch at which it exists and comes forth distinctly into 
the light ; an epoch so remarkable that it may be assumed 
and fixed as the definite period when the true existence 
and vital manifestation of consciousness (Self-Consciousness) 
commences." 

It seems probable that the Ego is fully formed when the 
Brain has attained its mature size and shape and contents, or 
about the seventh year. (Bastian.) This is advanced in ac- 
cordance with the view all the preceding pages have illus- 
trated, that Mind enters from outside into the mesh of matter 
as long as that material receptacle improves, and so invites it, 
and because we are also led to believe that Mind in the same 
way ceases to enter from outside when the Ego and its fin- 
ished (morphologically) organ, the Brain, have simultane- 
ously appeared. 

This view is supported by Spencer's researches, though he 
would carry the process much further than we believe it 
goes. We have limited it to that period antecedent to the 
rise of the Ego, and have, in the main, determined that the 
Ego, the Personal Identity, is recognized in childhood, and is 
about synchronous with the morphological completion of the 
Brain. This takes place about the seventh year, though a 
slight enlargement continues till middle life. As the Ego 
grows, as Personality develops (see Chap. V.), the nervous 
elaboration of the organ of Mind must simultaneously im- 
prove, but this improvement becomes, by our view, guided 
and augmented by the self-direction of the individual. And 

* " Introduction to Philosophy of Consciousness." J. F. Ferrier, p. 
105. 



170 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

this view appears to be more concordant with facts and expe- 
rience rightly interpreted. But Spencer's language distinctly 
lends support to the assumption of mind entering from out- 
side, at least until the Ego is formed. He says :•* ''At birth 
the organization of the brain is incomplete, and does not 
cease its spontaneous progress for twenty or thirty years 
afterward. Those who contend that knowledge results 
wholly from the experiences of the individual, ignoring, as 
they do, the mental evolution which accompanies the autog- 
enous development of the nervous system, fall into an error." 
And, again : " The gradually-increasing intelligence dis- 
played throughout childhood and youth is more attributable 
to the completion of the cerebral organization than to the in- 
dividual experiences." We are quite aware that Mr. Spencer 
might not interpret these facts as we do here ; but, for our 
purpose, it is his evidence as to their reality that is de- 
sirable. 

The conclusion is stringent, however, that before the Ego 
— the Personal Identity — is evolved, through the con- 
junct development of the elements of Personality, the Mind 
of Man is not yet individualized, and in those periods when 
it is not, Death dissipates and removes every vestige of the 
animated organism as it existed before its visitation. The 
lower animal world must largely, if not entirely, suffer this 
obliteration; though in them, in some stages or in some cases, 
a sense of personal unity may be aroused, as Darwin has 
thought ; and if so, the logical conclusion is warranted that, 
on the grounds of argument and investigation adopted here, 
such creatures may see another life. Besides the brute 
creation, however, the human infant must, unless otherwise 
saved — (see Religious Analysis), suffer with them annihila- 
tion, irreversible and complete. Nor is this all. Educators 
and students of the psychological growth of children have 
* " Principles of Psychology," § 208. 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 171 

drawn the interesting and apparently irrefutable conclusion 
that the lower races of savages are in an infantile condition; 
that the human infant, in its growth mentally, reproduces the 
stages through which barbarian and aboriginal minds pass in 
their cultivation and advancement. On these points James 
Sully says : * " The theory of mind regards the processes 
of mental development in the individual as parts of much 
larger process, namely, the development of the mind of the 
race ; and this vast process again it connects with a far 
vaster one, namely, the gradual evolution of mind in the zoo- 
logical scale." In the infant, impressions come first, then 
perceptions succeed, in which intelligent elements are incor- 
porated, Memory follows, and so Comparison, Judgment, 
Imagination, Reasoning ; the emotional nature is similarly 
built up and expanded, as, first Fear, from strange impres- 
sions, and Pain, early experienced, bring out, as the power 
and tenacity of association increases, and inherited tempera- 
ment appears, Hate leading to Cruelty, Revenge, etc. ; as joy, 
in the midst of pleasure, graduating from a simple bodily 
contentment up' to the higher pleasures of sympathy, affec- 
tion, recognition, companionship, and in conjunction with 
the intellect forming a sensitivity to amusement, the sense 
of the ludicrous, etc. ; as Pride, from growth and satisfaction 
of Taste, from self-love variously manifested, as Vanity, 
Conceit, Envy, Shame ; as Moral Sense, developed late and 
connected with primary instincts, intellectual balance and ed- 
ucation showing itself in Shame, Remorse, Penitence, Confes- 
sion, etc. Lastly, the Will power, as Perez remarks, is seen 
" even in children less than three years old, a certain faculty, 
very fluctuating and capricious, it is true, 'of inhibiting or 
restraining action, notwithstanding the tendency of feelings 
or desires to manifest themselves in active motor outbursts.' " 
The development of mind, as it is called, in infants does 
* " Elements of Human Psychology." J. Sully, p, 686. 



172 Mans Belief in Immortality, 

resemble and is analogous to the development of mind in sav- 
ages, not as individuals, but as an ascending series of more 
and more mobile and expressional and receptive organisms. 

There is thus attached to this subject, at this point, a curi- 
ous reflection that the possibilities of a future life are neces- 
sarily lessened among races where the Ego — the Personal 
Identity — comes infrequently to the surface, where the tem- 
perament or diminished activity of Mind fail to bring it into 
substantial existence. Such an apparent inability to produce, 
or as it were give birth to, the Ego may be a racial character, 
an ethnic infirmity, which involves with it the psychological 
consequences of individual obliteration. The Orientals may 
be such a people. And this is strikingly in accord with sci- 
entific expectations. Regarded apart entirely from senti- 
mental considerations or predilections, we can understand 
distinctly that in the preparations going on here for individ- 
ual survival hereafter, a great number of abortive cases might 
occur. Accidents, disabilities, premature death, inherited 
weakness, would, we might anticipate, disturb or prevent pro- 
cesses for the production of an immortal person, as they do, 
by strictest analogy, the processes set in motion for the 
production of all other sorts of organisms. As far as this 
scientific analysis can go, this seems not only natural but 
inevitable. 

We may then conclude that, unless otherwise averted on 
such grounds as philosophy or science offers for any belief 
whatever in a future life, the human progeny, whether adults 
or infants, dying before the Ego, the Personal Identity, the 
Self, recognized by Consciousness, appears, sink into the void 
of blank annihilation. As Schopenhauer says, they " return 
into the womb of nature, from which they arose for a short 
time, enticed by the hope of more favorable conditions of 
existence than have fallen to their lot, and the same path out 
of which constantly remains open." 



The Genesis, Growth, and Durability of Mind. 173 

But neither is this all. Those in whom the developed Per- 
sonality has brought forth the Ego. do not necessarily fall 
heirs to immortality. We must . see what elements of per- 
manence are required for the durability of the Ego in these 
conditions into which we anticipate it will emerge in such a 
transmundane sphere. The claims of an Individual to exist 
hereafter promise no assurance that it will survive long in 
its new surroundings. And we must further look more 
acutely at the nature of this metaphysical constant which we 
talk of with redundancy, and seldom with clearness, this 
Ego, perchance to learn at least some datum of its appear- 
ance here in this world, and its necessary form beyond in the 
world to come. 

In our inquiry, not needlessly, we think, prolonged, as to 
the origin, growth, and durability of Mind in which, as the 
Ego exists therein, we place the components of the spiritual, 
or so to speak supernatural, being, we have reached these con- 
clusions : that its origin is extraneous or outside of matter; that 
its growth in time and in the individual is minutely correlated 
with the growth of nervous organization, and this in turn is cor- 
related with elaborations in complexity and beauty of all parts of 
the body ; that its durability as individualized depends upon its 
development in all its parts, thought, feeling, and will (the Per- 
sonality), and the consequent formation of the Ego, as a " func- 
tional 'product," and that where it — the Ego — is not extant, either 
in brutes or man, there can be no future existence. 

And what a deep and abiding sense of Man's responsibility 
and importance does this examination give us — Man in the 
abstract, not necessarily this or that Theodolphus, or this 
or that Marietta — what a sudden realization of his pregnant 
position as the summing up of all things ! Consciousness, as 
we have pointed out, in the first dim prolongations of Mind 
into Matter in a Sea Urchin, being the prophecy of an in- 
creasing Consciousness running through all the strands of 



174 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

animal life, along with a more and more enriched endowment 
of all parts of Mind, finally becoming Self-Consciousness — 
the Ego — royally arrayed with the effulgence of a fair Per- 
sonality, and the beauty of the "human face divine." Truly 
in a profound sense the words of Schopenhauer may be re- 
called: "All is full of him, and there is no place where he is 
not, no being in which he does not live ; for it is not existence 
that supports him, but he that supports existence. " 



CHAPTER V. 

THE FORM AND DURABILITY OF THE EGO. 

Immateriality, however far it suggests indestructibility, 
or to whatever extent it becomes freed sui generis from the 
accidents of matter, may be unable, we must confess, to sur- 
vive in any demonstrable way, or in any special instance, the 
deterioration of the visible organism it controls. With no 
inherent identity with matter, by the accident, or through the 
purpose of creation, the tract of Mind has been applied, we 
conceive, to the tract of matter, and the number of adherent 
points between the opposed areas has increased in the evolu- 
tion of animate nature, until in the highest Man the widest 
range of possible contact was reached. With death, the 
individualized portion of Mind located in different persons 
might be restored to the vast reservoir of its source outside 
of Nature, and the local phenomena it presented as this or 
that man or woman disappear with its relapse to its primal 
pleroma, upon the ruin of the body it inhabited. The spec- 
tacle of Nature on this hypothesis would be the forcing into 
matter of Mind db extra, and matter assuming more and more 
receptive shapes for its enclosure, stimulated first by the im- 
pulse of creation, to rise to higher forms, and secondly by the 
progressive implication of Mind within its folds. For observe — 
and there is no desire with us to talk unmeaningly or darkly — 
Mind under the pressure of God (we presume there is no 
question with any Intelligence that there is a God) comes 
into connection with matter at some point in the serial chain 
of life, and then by its buoyant and creative energy reacts 



176 Man's Belief in Immortality. 

on its environment, and accelerates the movement of evo- 
lution, and with each motion forward involves itself more 
extendedly in the newer forms. Suppose Man is reached. 
The question of his remaining persistent after his grossly 
material form decays is answered by learning whether the 
Mind in him can maintain a secular existence apart from its 
origin, and the likelihood of this rests on the likelihood of 
Mind being able by, as it were, a nucleal segmentation, to 
establish an independent centre, which is in fact a minimized 
representation of its source. This source is God, this centre 
is the Ego. 

All this, so far, may seem only a theory, unproven and un- 
likely. It is more than a theory, it is a working hypothesis, 
and although it is unproven, it is not unlikely. But if we can 
gather together sufficient relevant evidence to make its clauses 
appear altogether possible, we have furnished a group of 
considerations entirely in harmony with scientific thought, 
accordant with the tendency of scientific speculation, and in 
a measure directional and suggestive in scientific explorations 
as to the reality of a future life. Even then, however, as we 
have repeatedly insisted, this scientific analysis only offers a 
possibility and no proof of this hope. It establishes an aspect 
of this question which justifies expectancy, which entitles us 
to put ourselves in accord with its requirements, on a basis 
of experiment, while at the same time we realize the critical 
difference between such an attempt and a chemical test or 
an astronomical observation. 

This hypothesis requires a fundamental distinction between 
Mind and Matter, and so far is reconciled on the basis of a 
definition of abstract terms, and its interpretation of a large 
group of facts, with Dualism. But it brings these opposed 
bodies into an increasingly concentrated contact until their 
mutual coalescence in Man as a double-sided animal, and the 
emergence of the Ego as its effect, compel us to accept a 



The Form and Durability of the Ego. 177 

provisional Monism as the only adequate view to be taken 
of this final stage upon the interpenetration of both, and the 
birth of the Absolute Person. This does not necessitate the 
interpolation of any new conceptions in regard to Mind and 
Matter, nor the intervention of any violent suppositions as 
to their relations, nor to any subversion of the intuitively 
recognized distinction of Ego and Non-Ego in our bodies. 
But while it has surrendered nothing to the distinctive claims 
of materialism, nor lessened the dignity and moral value of 
spiritualism, nor indeed made any more comprehensible or 
less mysterious the simultaneity of Mind and Matter, it does 
provide the only scientific theory available for a belief in a pos- 
sible future life. For as a fact of whose ultimate raison d'etre, 
or of whose positive meaning or cause, we can never know 
anything, as the fruit of experiment or inspection, we find a 
Mind and its conscious possessor incorporated in a body. 
The connection between them is very constant, and at any 
rate the products or processes of Mind, though instantly 
revealed as inconvertible with the products and processes of 
Matter, are the consequences of the latter, and the Mind's 
action in turn subjects the organized tissues, substance, and 
parts of the body to change and modification. " The changes 
of the brain are a cause of the states of consciousness, and the 
mind behaves as it does behave because of the behavior of 
the molecules of the brain," and " the states of conscious- 
ness are a cause of the molecular condition and changes of 
the nervous mass of the brain, and through it of the other 
tissues and organs of the body." (Ladd.) This union is 
illustrated in the most minute way ; it seems truly causal and 
resists the interpretation given by " Occasionalism," as a con- 
temporaneous and ordained coincidence in two realms of 
being. This union is further illustrated from our historical 
review of the means and instrumentalities and stages by which 
Mind has been brought to this' intimate dependence and cor- 



178 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

poral coexistence with Matter. The deepening impression 
made by these considerations is that of the conceivably 
irresolvable nature of this union. The disappearance of 
one member of the union involves that of the other, and we 
are driven to believe that this may or must happen even when 
we observe that Mind in its development has increased its 
dimensions, has displayed more and more aptitudes, notably 
strengthened its energy, and improved in quickness, depth, 
and beauty. Hence the reappearance of Mind in some other 
world must be attended by the reappearance of a Material 
frame as well. For along with this rise in character, physi- 
ological growth of body in all these directions has kept a 
fairly even pace, until " the sound mind in the sound body " 
evokes a conception of an ideal balance of parts, and obtains 
its best expression in an agile and capable and comely frame, 
governed by a vitalized and elaborate Brain. These phases 
in mind and body, so far as they are illustrated in the zoologi- 
cal series, point to an entrance of Mind into the physical 
order as their beginning, and indicate a widening receptivity 
of the zoological series for Mind, resulting into a self-de- 
termination of the series towards higher forms. And this 
march of forms, and progression of mental phenomena in 
forms, this increasing segregation of brain and amplitude 
and multiplicity of movements and faculties, may or may 
not have been assisted by creative acts ; but if so, their 
appearance is deceptively or entirely masked by their com- 
plete fusion with the organic chain of life. Here and there 
a gap leaped over publishes their probable agency, and with 
the advent of Man some extraordinary and extra-limital influ- 
ence inaugurated an advance so abrupt, and distinguished by 
such a complete involution of Mind in Matter, that it is usu- 
ally referred to as a prime example of divine interposition. 
But a striking and radically important principle is uncovered 
through this review, which is of capital value in fixing our 



The Form and Durability of the Ego. 179 

expectations as to our future state. Mind as it has increased 
in nature has nowhere, along the line, involved itself so as 
to give the organism it controlled assurance of any further 
existence after this life, except where the Ego — the devel- 
oped Personality — was formed. We found that the Ego was 
formed only in the highest ranges of life, and also in these high- 
est ranges of life elaborated matter most completely expressed 
this egoistic state of Mind ; hence, where a future state of life 
ex hypothesi is rendered possible, there Mind and Matter are the 
most extendedly united and the least separable. The question, 
then, of the future life resolves itself into the inquiry, How 
far are we justified in supposing the individualized Mind can 
maintain any after existence as a material residence or mani- 
festation ? We recognize the individualized Mind by its evi- 
dent works and acts, but we have no knowledge whatever of 
it as a cognizable object outside of Body. Its localization 
and objective reality is conditioned in body, and that not as 
a tenement, but as a somatic mesh with whose fibres it is at 
every point contiguous. We are indeed convinced that the 
whole motion of organic life has had but this one intention : 
the attraction and the retention of Mind in Matter. This is the 
lesson of Creation. And here we are given clearly an inti- 
mation of when this Ego arises, and more than that, in what 
form the Ego may enjoy a life beyond the grave. The Ego 
arises when there is a state of advanced union between Mind 
and Matter ; the^realfzati'on of Self comes at a point when 
there is a coalescence of Mind and Matter, at that juncture 
when the elements of the former— the Personality — thinking, 
willing, and feeling, have sufficiently developed to make us 
sensible of ourselves, and also sensible that we are both body 
and mind. Mind at no time, as we know, is separately 
existing apart from Matter ; but we do not feel their mutual 
contact and interpenetration until Mind has reached a certain 
point of growth, and at that point its elaborate commixture, 



180 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

so to speak, with Matter is sensibly realized, and the Ego 
arises as a consciousness of our mental oneness and our 
bodily oneness. And this position is supported by physio- 
logical and psychological evidence, and by the thought of 
writers on these subjects. 

We know that the sense of identity arises in us when the 
material organism, the Body, has developed to such a degree 
as to respond to all the general phases of the Personality, 
and when the Mind has developed to such a degree as to 
summon out all the general phases of the molecular machin- 
ery it controls or needs. Of course, in both Mind and Matter 
great progress is made in the detail and finish of this union ; 
but at the time when the Sense of Personal Identity is antici- 
pated, this concordance in outline is finished. It indeed grows 
and grows within, and with that growth the Ego becomes 
more enduring, better recognized, and more absolutely per- 
manent. Of that we shall speak later. But that the Sense 
of Personal Identity is phenomenal of that period when 
Mind becomes conscious of its impersonation, so to speak, 
in Matter, most able students affirm. Luys says : * " Like 
all the operations of the organism in action, the notion of 
our conscious personality does not all at once arrive at the 
degree of complete perfection which it presents in the adult. 
It passes through successive phases of development ; it is at 
first rudimentary in the individual just born, and it follows by 
degrees, in its natural development, the successive progress 
of the evolution of the nervous apparatuses which are its 
basis." Maudsley says f : 

"There is the most perfect harmony, the most intimate connection or 
sympathy, between the different organs of the body as the expression of 
its organic life, a unity of the organism beneath consciousness : it is a 
connection which, as Hunter said, might be called a species of intelli- 

* " The Brain and Its Functions." J. Luys, p. 238. 
t " Pathology of Mind." H. Maudsley, p. 211. 



The Form and Durability of the Ego. 1 8 1 

gence, and the brain is quite aware that the body has a liver or a stomach, 
and feels the effects of disorder in any one of the organs, without declar- 
ing in consciousness the cause of what it feels. This unconscious but 
important cerebral activity, which is the expression of the organic sym- 
pathies of the brain, cannot fail, when rightly apprehended, to teach the 
lesson that every organic motion, visible or invisible, sensible or insensi- 
ble, ministrant to the noblest or to the humblest uses, does not pass away 
issueless, but has its due effect upon the whole, and thrills throughout the 
most complex recesses of the mental life." 

Ribot says : * " The body is ever present to the Ego as its 
own, and the mental subject feels and perceives that it exists 
in some sort locally within the limited extent of the organ- 
ism. It is a perpetual and unfailing monitor, making the 
state of the body ever present to the consciousness, and it 
manifests in an unmistakable way the indissoluble connection 
of psychical with physiological life." And Spencer has shown 
the inevitable aptness of this concomitancy of Mind and 
Matter, for he has made it clear f " that the several circum- 
stances which facilitate or hinder nervous action are also 
circumstances which facilitate or hinder feeling ; that as 
nervous action occupies appreciable time, so feeling occupies 
appreciable time ; that each feeling leaves a partial inca- 
pacity for a like feeling, as each nervous action leaves a 
partial incapacity for a like nervous action ; that, other things 
equal, the intensities of feelings vary as the intensities of the 
correlative nervous actions ; that the difference between direct 
and indirect nervous disturbances corresponds to the differ- 
ence between the vivid feelings we call real and the faint 
feelings we call ideal ; that certain mere special objective 
phenomena which nervous actions present have answering 
subjective phenomena in the forms of feeling we distinguish 
as desires," and these feelings stand for Mind to Spencer, for 

* " Heredity." Th. Ribot, p. 259. 

f " The Principles of Psychology." H. Spencer, p. 128. This work is 
a remarkable elaboration, in another direction, of principles implied in 
our statement. 



1 82 Man's Belief in Immortality. 

he says in another place : " The proximate components of 
Mind are of two broadly-contrasted kinds — Feelings and the 
Relations between feelings " — a position with which we have 
here no practical interest. 

And that there is this substantial quasi oneness of Person- 
ality in its elements of thinking, willing, and feeling with the 
elements of the organized body, is seen to a degree in such 
physical expression of men's temperaments and faculties as 
face, form, and deportment yield. 

' ' Cassius has a lean and hungry look ; 

He thinks too much : such men are dangerous." 

The player uses this expressive means to heighten or ex- 
plain the temper and character of his " counterfeit present- 
ment," holding, "as 'twere, the mirror up to nature ; to show 
virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very 
age and body of the time his form and pressure." 

The skilful and ingenious novelist divines this union, and 
dresses the personal aspects of his creations in the material 
garbs that will best emit and reenforce the spiritualities they 
cover. 

" The eloquent Pickwick, with one hand gracefully con- 
cealed behind his coat-tails and the other waving in air, to 
assist his glowing declamation, his elevated position reveal- 
ing those tights and gaiters which, had they clothed an 
ordinary man, might have passed without observation, but 
which, when Pickwick clothed them — if we may use the ex- 
pression — inspired involuntary awe and respect ; " Jingle, 
"thin and haggard, but an indescribable air of jaunty impu- 
dence and perfect self-possession pervading the whole man ; " 
the Antiquary, " of the true Scottish cast, strongly marked, 
and rather harsh in feature, with a shrewd and penetrating 
eye, and a countenance in which habitual gravity was enliv- 
ened by a cast of ironical humor ; " Sir Charles Grandison, 
with " his lively soul looking out at his fine eyes, yet with an 



The Form and Durability of the Ego. 183 

air as modest as respectful ; " Evelina, as Lady Howard 
wrote : " Her face and person answer my most refined ideas 
of complete beauty ; " " she has the same gentleness in her 
manner, the same natural grace in her motions, that I for- 
merly so much admired in her mother ; " Clive Newcome, "a 
fine, tall young stripling with the same bright blue eyes ; " 
Hester Prynne, a " beautiful woman, so picturesque in her 
attire and mien, and with the infant at her bosom, an object 
to remind one of the image of Divine Maternity ; " Mr. 
Dimmesdale, " a person of very striking aspect, with a 
white, lofty, and impending brow, large, brown, melancholy 
eyes, and a mouth which, unless when he forcibly compressed 
it, was apt to be tremulous, expressing both nervous sensi- 
bility and a vast power of self-restraint ; " Roger Chilling- 
worth, with " remarkable intelligence in his features, as of a 
person who had so cultivated his mental part that it could 
not fail to mould the physical to itself, and become manifest 
by unmistakable tokens ; " Don Quixote, " of a strong con- 
stitution, spare-bodied, of a meagre visage ; " Bishop Myriel, 
" well built, though of short stature, elegant, graceful, and 
witty ; " Romola and her father Bardo, " the same refinement 
of brow and nostril in both, counterbalanced by a full though 
firm mouth and powerful chin, which gave an expression of 
proud tenacity and latent impetuousness ; an expression car- 
ried out in the backward poise of the girl's head, and the 
grand line of her neck and shoulders ; " Tito's " bright face 
showed its rich tinted beauty without any rivalry of color 
above his black sajo" "the finished fascination of his air," 
" a fleet, soft-coated, dark-eyed animal that delights you." 

This introduces the wide subject of physiognomy to which 
Gall, Spurzheim, and Lavater have contributed a great num- 
ber of interesting facts and observations, though they also 
have weakened their positions by an exaggerated estimate of 
their value. 



184 Man's Belief in Immortality. 

Macaulay says of Lord Hastings, " a person small and 
emaciated, yet deriving dignity from a carriage which, while 
it indicated deference to the court, indicated also habitual 
self-possession and self-respect, a high and intellectual fore- 
head, a brow pensive, but not gloomy, a mouth of inflexible 
decision, a face pale and worn, but serene, on which was 
written, as legibly as under the picture in the council cham- 
ber at Calcutta, Mens cequa in arduis." 

Parton says of Webster, " tall, gaunt and sallow, with an 
incomparable forehead, and those cavernous and brilliant eyes 
of his, he had much of the large and tranquil presence which 
was so important an element of his power over others at all 
periods of his life." It is said of Caesar, "his tall stature, 
his rounded and well-proportioned limbs, stamped his person 
with grace that distinguished him from all others. He had 
black eyes, a piercing look, a pale complexion, a straight and 
high nose . . . whilst his breadth of brow betokened 
intellectual faculties." And painters have been great as 
they have penetrated the elusive shades of character and 
drawn and colored them in the lineaments and tints of faces. 
Of Leonardo da Vinci, Pater writes : " He plunged also in 
human personality, and became above all a painter of por- 
traits ; faces of a modelling more skilful than has been seen 
before or since, embodied with a reality which almost 
amounts to illusion on dark air. To take a character as it 
was, and delicately sound its stops, suited one so curious in 
observation, curious in invention." Of Rubens Taine says : 
" personne n'a donne aux figures un tel elan, un geste si 
impetueux, une course si abandonnee et si furieuse, une agi- 
tation et une tempete si universelles de tous les muscles 
enfles et tordus pour un seul effort. Les personnages sont 
parlant ; leur repos lui-meme est suspendu au bord de Tac- 
tion ; on sent ce qu'ils viennent de faire et ce qu'ils vont 
faire. Le present en eux est impregne du passe et gros de 



The Form and Durability of the Ego. 185 

l'avenir ; non seulement tout leur visage, mais toute leur 
attitude conspire a manifester le flot coulant de leur pensee, 
de leur passion, de tout leur etre ; on entend le cri interieur 
de leur emotion ; on pourrait dire les paroles qu'ils pronon- 
cent ; les plus fugitives et les plus fines nuances du sentiment 
sont chez Rubens." 

But the implications of this union extend further, more 
objectively yet ; it is evinced in the great law of Style, by 
which not only individuals but races throw into the articula- 
tions of speech, the forms of sentences, the phrases of music, 
the structural detail masses and material of architecture, the 
spirit tone and attributes of their personality. As Taine has 
said of literary style : 

" C'est au style qu'on juge un esprit. C'est le style qui devoile sa 
qualite dominante. C'est le style qui, en donnant la mesure de sa force 
et de sa faiblesse fait prevoir ses merites et ses erreurs. Car qui est-ce 
que le style, sinon le ton habituel? Et qui determine ce ton, sinon 
l'etat ordinaire de l'esprit ? Done, sitot qu'on le connait, on connait 
une cause toute puissante, puis qu'elle agit toujours, et toujours dans 
le meme sens. On sait si l'esprit est mesure ou pre'eipite, net ou obscur, 
systematique ou decousu, et jusqu'a quel degre. Ce sont done de 
grands signes que le choix des mots la longueur et la brievete des peri- 
odes, l'espece et le nombre des metaphores ; le tour des phrases explique 
l'espece des idees et 1'ecrivain annonce tout l'homme." 

And this, sufficiently generalized, may apply to the art of 
nations as contrasted at present, and as contrasted at differ- 
ent epochs of emotional and intellectual growth. Here, 
indeed, there is no organic union between the person as 
executant and the material as the instrumentality, but there 
is brought to view the plasticity and ductility of matter to 
express thought under the laws of our being by which words 
and pictures and buildings seem to be thought. 

But when we turn to the expression of emotions in Man 
and Animals, we encounter a wide series of facts establishing 
the closest correlation between states of personality, and 
arrangements of muscles, and positions of the body. It is 



1 86 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

true that Darwin, in discussing this broad field of research 
and observation, traces the present use of various muscles by 
certain states of feeling to a similar use of the same parts in 
animals, alleging inherited habit, and imparts to the subject 
a utilitarian aspect which there seem reasons to suspect is 
artificial and forced ; at any rate is far from proven. We 
think that there may be much truth in Gratiolet's opinion, 
quoted by Darwin, though it is doubtless inapplicable in 
special instances, and may be somewhat pleonastically ex- 
pressed. He says * : 

" U resulte de tous les faits que J'ai rappeles, que les sens, l'imagina- 
tion et la pensee elle-meme, si e'levee si abstraite qu'on la suppose, ne 
peuvent s'exercer sans eveiller un sentiment correlatif, et que ce senti- 
ment se traduit directement, sympathiquement, symboliquement, ou 
metaphoriquement, dans toutes les spheres des organes exterieurs, qui le 
racontent tous, suivant leur mode d'action propre, comme si chacun 
d'eux avait ete directement affecte." 

And Mr. Bain has said f : 

" I look upon the expression so-called as part and parcel of the feeling. 
I believe it to be a general law of the mind, that along with the fact of 
inward feeling or consciousness there is a diffusive action or excitement 
over the bodily members." 

But admitting everything Darwin has said — and all he says 
is of fascinating interest — the connection between a mental 
state and some bodily expression of it in attitude, rearrange- 
ment of muscles, muscular movement, tension or adjustment, 
is in no way impeached. For, however it has arisen, these 
adjusted connections do express feeling, and, when presented 
accurately in a painting or on the stage, tell the spectator at 
once what the assumed or pictured emotion is. We cannot 
enter upon this attractive field even to quote instances ; 
we must be content to give some general statements, and 
refer the reader to Darwin's admirable book for details. 

* Vide " Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals." Chas. 
Darwin, Introduction. 

t Quoted by Darwin, same work; Introduction. 



The Form and Durability of the Ego. 187 

Darwin has shown that " the same state of mind is expressed 
throughout the world with remarkable uniformity," and, as 
he truly remarks, " this fact is in itself interesting as evidence 
of the close similarity in bodily structure and mental dispo- 
sition of all the races of mankind." Darwin opposes any 
view assigning a voluntary, a conscious agency, in the cre- 
ation of bodily expression ; and this seems most just, He 
says : * " That the chief expressive actions exhibited by man 
and by the lower animals are now innate or inherited, — that 
is, have not been learned by the individual, — is admitted by 
every one. So little has learning or imitation to do with 
several of them, that they are, from the earliest days and 
throughout life, quite beyond our control ; for instance, the 
relaxation of the arteries of the skin in blushing, and the in- 
creased action of the heart in anger." And, again : " On 
the contrary, every true or inherited movement of expression 
seems to have had some natural and independent origin." 
He does, however, believe that " most of the movements of 
expression must have been gradually acquired, afterward be- 
coming instinctive," and he separates three classes of causes 
for all ; first, the use of expressions continued by heredity, 
and originally employed in earlier stages of life " in grati- 
fying some desire or relieving some sensation ; " second, 
Antithesis, or the spontaneous use of movements directly 
opposite to those involved when the subject is " under the 
excitement of an opposite frame of mind ; " third, " direct 
action of the excited nervous system on the body, indepen- 
dently of the will, and independently, in large part, of habit," 
the nervous current flowing through certain channels, at 
first traversed because most readily reached, and afterwards 
becoming beaten tracks or avenues of discharge by habitual 
use.f 

* "Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals," Chap. XIV. 
\ See H. Spencer's " Physiology of Laughter." 



1 88 Man's Belief in Immortality. 

Of course Darwin is influenced by his view as to the origin 
of man, and the doctrine of Descent obtains in his work an 
ingenuous and an ingenious endorsement. But that there is 
something more radical to be said on this question seems 
apparent when we reflect that the broad generic features of 
expression, as everywhere known and exhibited, are variously 
modified in different temperaments, and that, when in hyp- 
notic patients we commence at the wrong end of the chain of 
expressional succession, and adjust certain facial muscles in 
their relative position to express certain sensations, the emo- 
tions are induced.* These are all unmistakable and preg- 
nant facts, and they go to show that Personality — from which 
the Ego springs— is more and more knit in with the frame- 
work of our bodies ; they unexceptionally lend support to 
our view that the Ego is realized as this juncture of Person- 
ality and Body becomes more and more apparent. 

The obverse of these considerations — which support the 
conclusion that the Ego, as an instinct, is synchronous with 
the moment of developed contact between Mind and Body, 
and that it becomes more and more irrepressible as this con- 
tact widens and improves — would be a train of evidence 
showing that when this contact is broken, the Sense of Per- 
sonal Identity is disturbed, or disappears, or becomes vagrant 
and irresponsible. And the more it is broken the more 
completely is the Ego, as a unit of consciousness, banished. 
This is shown in insanity, from the first stages of melancholy 
to the worst periods of madness. Alienists show that demen- 
tation is accompanied with a loss of the sense of permanence, 
hallucinations, disorder in recognizing environment, passing 
into preposterous assumptions that persons are things, ani- 
mals, or impossible characters. The subject is somebody 
else, or many other people. The lesions of the cerebral 
centres may be partial, or they may be so general or severe 
* See " Animal Magnetism." Binet and Fere, pp. 279, 280. 



The Form and Durability of the Ego. 189 

as to produce a complete subversion of sanity in every rela- 
tion. The Ego maintains itself as long as the connection of 
mind and body is continued, of course ; but when the ?iorm of 
that connection, as constituted in healthy conditions, is im- 
paired, then the Ego becomes many egos, is obscured, lost 
and recovered, wavering, faulty, useless as a basis of predic- 
tion, or thought, or feeling, or action. The personality, in a 
sense, is decomposed, and the Ego seems to slip away into 
non-existence. 

In hypnotism, at least that form of it designated by oper- 
ators as artificial somnambulism, the patient is curiously 
affected to believe he is some one else ; his sense of identity 
seems overruled or degenerated. To quote Binet and Fere : 
" It has been justly said that a cataleptic subject ceases to 
have a personality ; that there is no cataleptic ego. An analo- 
gous state may be found in certain dreams to which we sur- 
render ourselves without reflection and without resistance." * 
Again, it is said that hypnotic influences seem to change 
character, to improve and amend natures, at least to rectify 
bad tastes, avert quarrelsome and disagreeable moods, and 
instil and preserve serenity of mind.f Now, putting aside the 
indefiniteness and indecision of our knowledge of the hyp- 
notic states, we think that these changes in temper and vari- 
ations in identity can be referred to alterations in the natural 
state of contact between Mind and Body, to the numbing of 
centres of the cerebral cortex, or to their super-excitation. 
All of which strikingly supports our statement that the Ego 
is developed when " there is a state of advanced union be- 
tween Mind and Matter." This union, as we have at length 
suggested, has been accomplished in certain carefully elab- 
orated ways, in a certain order, and by a long evolution 

* " Animal Magnetism.'* Binet and Fere, p. 143. 
f " Human Personality in the Light of Hypnotic Suggestion." F. W. 
H. Myers, Proc. Soc. Psy. Res., Pt. X., London. 



190 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

of forms (see Chaps. III. and IV.), and Personality and the 
Ego, as its functional product, have thereby arisen. When 
that "way" of union is disturbed, modified, impaired, ac- 
cented, or diminished, morbid, pathological, abnormal states 
supervene, and we enjoy the spectacles produced in hypno- 
tism and mental aberration. And while we insist on this, we 
do not lessen our tenacity of conviction that the Ego itself, 
while it appears at the moment of an expanded union 
between Mind and Matter, is not simply an expression for 
that union, but something inconceivably more radical. 

Nay, it is involved in the categories of thought that the 
Ego, while it has reference to a subadjacent principle unify- 
ing all the elements of Personality — thinking, willing, and 
feeling — also predicates a body in which that Personality 
dwells, which it irradiates, which expresses it, and from 
whose nature it cannot ultimately escape. But if the Ego 
arises when there is the realization of the juxtaposition and 
contact of Mind and Matter in the Body, in what way does 
this suggest our state beyond this life, when at least one 
member of the union — the body — has succumbed to disease, 
or how does it accord with the definition given in the Intro- 
duction (p. 9) that Personal Identity is that sort of Identity 
which assumes "an existence involved in the object, dom- 
inating it, producing its clear and continuous definition 
from everything else, even through a serial prolongation of 
states " ? In this way, that if the Ego, upon which we rest 
our philosophic claims to permanence, is consciously realized at 
the time when Mind is substantially expressed in Matter, and 
that if the Ego is Personality — Willing, Thinking, Feeling — 
gathering itself into a self-existent unity, then that unity must 
always retain a material form, from the very fact that its real- 
ization is dependent 071 such a material expression. But as we 
know the body perishes, it — the Ego — a, so to speak, physi- 
cally expressed mind, must assume a new body, and thus 



The Form and Durability of the Ego. 191 

remain " an existence involved in the object, dominating it, 
producing its clear and continuous definition from everything 
else, even through a serial prolongation of states." 

It may be objected at once that the assumption of the Ego 
as a mental unit is quite e»ough to justify the hopes we 
cherish of a future life, without any reference to this coali- 
tion of Mind and Matter. But, from a scientific point of 
view, such an assumption in itself carries no weight, except 
as it is widened to embrace the series of physiological facts 
we have laboriously reviewed, and practically no conception 
of such a hyper-sensual mental figment, existing apart from 
a material expression, can be formed by man. Our Mind is 
so enclosed by Matter that even a conception — itself a men- 
tal, and therefore nervous, process — of any personal Condi- 
tion outside of Matter is impossible. 

Our scientific analysis preserves the integrity of the meta- 
physical position of the Ego, and gives it mundane reason- 
ableness and cognizable shape by making it, whenever felt, 
a sanction of the union of Mind and Body, a fact which 
medicine and psychology both teach and prove. Therefore, 
the shape of the Ego in this world for you or me, Reader, 
is, objectively, what men see or hear of us ; subjectively, 
what we know ourselves to be in thought, will, and feeling, 
for, as Mansel has said : " Of the soul as a simple substance, 
apart from its particular modification, consciousness tells us 
nothing." And yet to answer in the affirmative the question 
asked on the first page of this chapter, "Whether the Mind 
in Man can maintain a secular existence apart from its 
origin," we must accept the conviction we possess of the 
absolute existence of a Personal Identity — body or no body — 
under all modifications. This, Philosophy and Philosophers 
reiterate. Prof. Ferrier says : * " Let us turn from the uni- 
verse, then, and look to ourselves, ' I.' Now, here is an 

* Introduction to "The Philosophy of Consciousness." J. F. Ferrier. 



192 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

instance to which there is no distinction or sundering 
between the notion and the reality. . . . Between the 
notion and the reality in this case Scepticism can find no 
conceivable entrance for the minutest point of its spear. 
Let any man consult his own experience whether the notion 
' I ' being given, the reality ' I ' must not also necessarily be 
present ; and also whether, the reality being present, the 
notion must not also accompany it. . . . The notion ' I,' 
however, cannot exist without the reality ' I,' and the reality 
cannot exist without the notion 'I,' as any one may satisfy 
himself by the slightest reflection." J. H. Green says : * 
" Without this concipiency of Substance and Accident, 
without this assumption of Idem et Alter , in all existential 
Being, without this attributing a somewhat which is perma- 
nent and abiding amid all change in the outward facts and 
phenomena of existence, the Subject could not be identified 
as that which gives unity and objective reality to our expe- 
rience of the phases of existence, and the phenomenal expo- 
nents would be dissolved into mere unconnected particulars 
of sense. " Spencer says : f " Deeper than demonstration, 
deeper even than definite cognition, deep as the very nature 
of the mind, is the postulate at which we have arrived, viz., 
our Identity. Its authority transcends all others whatever ; 
for not only is it given in the constitution of our own con- 
sciousness, but it is impossible to imagine a consciousness so 
constituted as not to give it." 

Yet we affirm, and all we have passed over strengthens 
this affirmation, thlt the Ego is developed as a functional 
product from the growth of Personality, is indeed the coher- 
ence of the elements of Personality, and that its realization 
is intimately connected with the* evolution of an expanded 
contact between our Mind and our Bodies. And now, 

* " Spiritual Philosophy.' - J. H. Green. 
\ " First Principles/' §§ 27, 76. 



The Form and Durability of the Ego. 193 

auxiliary to the position we have reached — viz., that the Ego, 
upon which the hope of a future life rests, has a material 
expression, both here and hereafter — we find that the Ego, 
once formed, may be infinitely perfected, and that as it is 
perfected the sensitive response of the Body to Mind itself 
is evenly accelerated, or rather the Body puts on the form of 
Mind, and differentiates itself into finer or grosser phases of 
matter. Thus the Ego becomes more and more established. 
And this process exactly reverses the previous process we 
have examined, in direction though not in nature ; whereas, 
in that, Mind came ab extra from outside by a continuous 
stream of influx, in accordance with the receptivity of matter 
for it, in this Mind develops ab intra from inside by a virtual 
activity, by assimilation of nutrient elements fitted for its de- 
velopment, either, as we say, in righteousness or in sin. It 
becomes, in a sense, creative ; it is, to use our own words, 
" a minimized representation of its source " — God ; it is " a 
feeding, and growing, and multiformly accretive creature." 
To this period, also, the words used on page 176 apply ; it 
" entitles us to put ourselves in accord with its requirements 
on a basis of experiment." For now Mind dresses Matter 
with its own features ; in this reversed process the wedding 
of Mind and Matter still goes on, and with deeper intentions. 
Mind now determines the durability of the Ego in such new 
circumstances as it may encounter hereafter ; it sways the cur- 
rent of animal expression, it resolves the inertia of physical 
properties, it permeates the system and subdues it, it exhila- 
rates the body either with the toxic stimulants of vice or the 
renovating passion of high ideals ; it becomes, to use the 
language of Burnouf,* "the central atom," which, after the 
dissolution of the body, " is there ready to begin anew the 
work of self-incarnation," for, " having acquired a certain 

* " La Vie et la Pensee." Emile Burnouf. See "Mind," Vol. XII., 
p. 302. 

13 



194 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

modification of character in the course of its last life experi- 
ence, it must be placed in new and suitable circumstances 
before re-incarnation can go forward." 

To develop the Ego we must develop the Personality, as it 
is its functional product. And nothing can be more obvious 
or true that, with the increased power of thought, the greater 
strength of will, the variety and intensity of emotion, the 
Sense of Personal Identity is wonderfully deepened. It is 
also evident that if thought and will and feeling are trained 
in one direction, are harmoniously disciplined and depend- 
ency exercised, the homogeneity of the Personality becomes 
conspicuous, the solidarity of the Ego impressive. If the 
Ego, ipso facto, may expect a future life, d fortiori that future 
life will appear more certain as the Ego rises in Conscious- 
ness with more and more subtle and irrefragable assertion. 
What must have been the strenuous force of his realization 
of himself in Alfred the Great, in whom all the agencies of 
Mind blended their strongest states, and were combined in 
equivalent proportions ? Prof. Green writes of him * : 

"Alfred was the noblest as he was the most complete embodiment of 
all that is great, all that is lovable, in the English temper. He combined, 
as no other man has ever combined, its practical energy, its patient and 
enduring force, its profound sense of duty, the reserve and self-control 
that steadies in it a wide outlook and a restless daring ; . . . wide, 
however, and various as was the king's temper, its range was less wonder- 
ful than its harmony. Of the narrowness, of the want of proportion, of 
the predominance of one quality over another which goes commonly with 
an intensity of moral purpose, Alfred showed not a trace. Scholar and 
soldier, artist and man of business, poet and saint, his character kept that 
perfect balance which charms us in no other Englishman save Shake- 
speare." 

When the Personality is thus unfolded, filled in and deep- 
ened, the Sense of Self-Existence as its functional product 
becomes unavoidable, not indeed at the moment when we are 
willing, or thinking, or feeling, but afterwards, when, by such 
* "History of the English People." J. R. Green. 



The Form and Durability of the Ego. 195 

processes, we have reached a higher stage of self-evolution. 

In the crises of action, in the reveries of thought, in the 

tumults of emotion, the Ego, as consciously realized, is more 

or less banished. Prof. Ferrier has truly written * : 

" The degree of our consciousness or self-reference always exists in an 
inverse ratio to the degree of intensity of any of our sensations, passions, 
emotions, etc., and that consciousness is never so effectually depressed, or 
perhaps we may say never so totally obliterated within us, as when we are 
highly transported by the vividness of any sensation, or absorbed in the 
violence of any passion." 

But at the next pause it will be found animated, as it were, 
by a new persistency, deriving a fresh import and an irresolv- 
able and unique emphasis. This, we believe, is incontro- 
vertible, and corroborates the justness of our expression as 
denning the Ego as the functional product of the Person- 
ality. 

fcNow this development of the Personality has a direct ref- 
erence to the durability of the Ego after this life. Upon the 
development of the Personality rests the assurance of a con- 
tinuance of the egoistic life, as is necessarily obvious, here- 
after. The substantial value of the functional product — the 
Ego — rises and falls with the dynamic energy of its source — 
the Personality — and the principle involved in the develop- 
ment of the Personality is in the strictest accordance with 
the principle, and its successive applications, which Herbert 
Spencer has illustrated in the phenomena of animal life on 
the earth. 

However insufficient Spencer's interpretation of our 
human attitude towards the ultimate questions of philosophy 
may appear, there can be no two opinions, we think, as to 
the validity and abiding importance of his definition of the 
phases of evolving life. Spencer has shown that whatever 
Life is in esse, its maintenance depends upon this indispensable 

* " Introduction to the Philosophy of Consciousness." J. F. Ferrier, 
p. 69. 



196 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

inveterate condition : " The definite combination of hetero- 
geneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in corre- 
spondence with external coexistences and sequences,"* or, as 
it is expressed more briefly : " The continuous adjustment of 
internal relations to external relations," it having been shown 
that " beginning with the low life of plants and of rudiment- 
ary animals, the progress to life of higher and higher kinds 
essentially consists in a continual improvement of the adapta- 
tion between organic processes and processes which environ 
the organism." Spencer has also shown that forms of life 
advance in grade and in persistency as this correspondence, 
beginning with a correspondence in homogeneity, passes 
through a correspondence in heterogeneity, in space, in time, 
in speciality, in generality, in complexity, and finally into a 
complete coordination of all of these. An example of the 
first — a correspondence in homogeneity — is found in the 
yeast plant, whose life " consists almost wholly of a few 
contemporaneous processes adjusted to the coexistent prop- 
erties of the medium which surrounds it ; " change these, 
and it exhibits no power to adjust itself to the more unusual 
conditions, and it perishes. An example of the second — 
a correspondence in heterogeneity — is found in the higher 
plants, where life displays "changes that correspond with 
the most general changes to which the environment is liable," 
and in these we find adaptive changes to air, moisture, light, 
temperature, and soil. An example of the third — a corre- 
spondence as extending in space — is found in higher ani- 
mals, where we note " the increasing distances at which 
coexistences and sequences in the environment produce 
adapted changes in the organism. This progress accom- 
panies the development of the senses of smell, sight, hear- 
ing, etc.," whereby the organism perceives and regulates its 
actions with reference to distant centres of action or distant 
* ■" Principles of Biology." H. Spencer, Part I., Chap. IV. 



The Form and Durability of the Ego. 197 

objects. An example of the fourth — a correspondence as 
extending in time — is found in those habits of animals 
related to the recurrence of seasons, as when " it is anatomi- 
cally demonstrable that the pairing and nidification of birds 
in the spring is preceded by constitutional changes which are 
probably produced by more food and higher temperature." 
The correspondence as increasing in speciality is seen in the 
improvement in discrimination of the senses, as with touch, 
with taste and smell, which become in the higher animals more 
sensitive in varying degrees in the nature of their reactions. 
The correspondence as increasing in generality is seen when 
we have " adjustments to such relations as those between bulk 
and weight, inanimateness and passivity — relations which 
extend beyond class limits and obtain under great dissimi- 
larities." The correspondence as increasing in complexity 
is " where the stimulus responded to consists, not of a single 
sensation, but of several, or where the response is not one 
action, but a group of actions." Finally, in the combination 
and summation of all these correspondences, we see " that 
in these highest manifestations of Life produced by the 
culture of civilization — these quantitative previsions which 
imply such intense vital action, while they so greatly sub- 
serve self-preservation by facilitating commerce and the arts 
— there should be this elaborate and complete coordination 
of inner relations to symbolize outer relations, serves as a 
crowning illustration of the truths, that Life is the mainte- 
nance of a correspondence between the organism and its 
environment, and that the degree of Life varies as the 
degree of correspondence," * and this degree has regard to 
vitality, durability, and variety. 

But our Life beyond this world, so far as the spectacle of 
Nature affords any clues— and Science is always subservient 
to such deductions — must advance and rise, or it must lapse, 

* " Principles of Psychology." H. Spencer, Part III., Chap. IX. 



Mans Belief in Immortality. 



deteriorate, and perish. There can be no other possibility, 
and few or no minds have ever contemplated anything but 
this alternative. Without regarding the question of retro- 
gression, a negative question in part* let us see how the 
expectation of improvement and permanence hereafter in- 
volves the principle illustrated by Spencer. 

In the first place, any life hereafter which is higher and 
better than that we now enjoy must be in the midst of condi- 
tions higher and better than those with which we are at pres- 
ent surrounded. And inasmuch as we can place no practical 
limit to the improvement of life hereafter, and must regard 
it, in strict analogy with the world of nature, as a "serial 
prolongation of states," these conditions must be constantly 
making higher and higher demands upon our psychical total- 
ity — our Personality — our thinking, willing, and feeling. But 
the growing demands of these conditions will be exactly, in 
nature, such as are made by the more and more complicated 
environments of animals here, from the noctiluca in the sea 
to man in society. They must be so, for they formulate the 
law of progress. The psychical correspondence will be con- 
tinually passing from those of homogeneity to those of 
heterogeneity, through correspondences in space to those in 
time, from those in speciality to those in generality and com- 
plexity. We are driven to conclude, then, that in this world 
our Personality must avail itself of all the means offered by 
circumstances, by education, by development, along each 
and every line of psychical endowment, throughout all parts 
and portions of personal being, to build up its internal 
fabric of mental elements, to perfect its power of assimila- 
tion, to increase its rapidity and accuracy of adjustment and 
correspondence for a higher, more complex, or more intense 
environment. If, upon its entrance upon such new condi- 

* But not wholly ; our analysis suggests some positive and dreadful 
possibilities. 



The Form and Durability of the Ego. 199 

tions, it fails to correctly correlate its own being with them, 
then, though it may, through its egoistic state, have secured 
exemption from actual obliteration or dispersion upon our 
so-called death, it cannot hope to maintain its life amid an 
environment it is inadequate to respond to, amid impulses it 
cannot accept, requirements it cannot supply, aliments it 
cannot appropriate, activities it cannot assist, phenomena it 
cannot record. It must die, not in this world, whose death 
it escaped, but in another world whose life it cannot support. 
Now, to what extent, through correspondences of homoge- 
neity, heterogeneity, through those in time, space, speciality, 
complexity, and generality, with the psychical world about 
us, we can advance our Personality it is quite unnecessary 
for us to determine at this point, or in this essay. For 
ourselves, we believe such advancement is only adequately 
provided for in Catholic Christianity, and nowhere else j it 
furnishes the only psychical environment which will evoke 
the higher correspondences of our mental or spiritual nature, 
and in this rests its supreme efficacy for most thoroughly 
fitting our Personality for the demands to be made upon 
it hereafter. This is by no means all it implies, as we shall 
see in the Christian Analysis, but with that we have here 
nothing to do. The Scientific Analysis has led us to a point 
where we realize the overwhelming importance for our per- 
sonal duration hereafter, to stimulate and enrich in all pos- 
sible ways our mental nature ; our power to will rightly, 
our power to think profoundly and justly, our power to feel 
intensely and sweetly. Then the Ego is itself strengthened, 
as we have perceived, its durability added to, its super — and 
con — sensual nature deepened. 

Our personalities will indeed be variously fitted for higher 
or lower positions in that second life, according to our 
power of correspondence to psychical surroundings, even as 
the scale of animal life shows us the simple yet perfect cor- 



200 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

respondence of an amoeba to its environment at the bottom, 
and the multiform sensitivity and labyrinthine areas of 
physical contact of a man at its apex. What correspond- 
ence in homogeneity, in heterogeneity, and in the other 
states given by Spencer may be made to mean in psychical 
life we do not feel called upon to discuss here. We have 
only here to indicate the law of progress, so far as external 
modifications go in animal life, and point out the natural 
analogy that a similar law of progress may, probably must, 
obtain in psychical life in order to secure for that psychical 
life a measurable prolongation in the conditions offered by a 
higher world of existence. 

Nor is this all. Another remarkable and interesting con- 
clusion is forced upon us. We have seen {ante) that the 
Ego in a future life will be conjoined with, adjunct to, a 
material body ; to that conclusion we ascended by a long 
but careful series of steps. And we have also observed the 
proportionate advance of Form with Mentality in the pano- 
rama of evolving life. If, then, Personality shall attain to 
nobler states hereafter, its Ego will assume more and more 
noble exterior configurations ; or, to use Spencer's words in 
another connection, we must believe " an approximately con- 
stant ratio is maintained between the impressibilities and the 
activities of the organism." This is inevitable, it is also 
intensely striking and curious. 

In conclusion : From a purely scientific point of view 
Mind, as an existing individual, apart from body, and pre- 
serving any cognate resemblance to, or suggestion of people 
as we see and speak of them, is impossible. The decadence, 
putrefaction and absorption of our bodies in the circle of 
vegetable life, animal nutrition, and gaseous diffusion are cer- 
tain, and if that decay is arrested artificially, the novelty and 
unnaturalness of the results attest how violent a contradic- 
tion of the natural law it is, and how sure will be its event- 



The Form and Durability of the Ego. 201 

ual failure. Yet we believe, while our scientific study shows 
the inevitable and. permanent union of Mind and Body, it also 
permits us to assume a. possibility of a hereafter for the indi- 
vidual. The Mind as it became, so to speak, identified with 
Matter, as its appearance in its various powers brought 
more and more of the mental totality within the compass of 
animal life, instantly opened a new centre of reference — the 
Ego. Mind is then, so to speak, materialized, though 
remaining a pervasive incognito which, when fully formed, 
invests the person, and when liberated, under the impetus of 
its transcendental resiliency, flashes from point to point, or 
is caught in the streams of super-sensual commotions and 
affinities. 

The dynamics of this position touch the whole realm of 
moral, religious, and intellectual life. The Ego is made a 
possible point of concentration {ipso facto by the advent of 
Mind, when its elements are present to the extent implied 
in a Man) by which the Mind may be absolved from the 
fate of simple disappearance, dispersion upon death. To 
the reflecting reader it will be apparent how wide and 
important are the bearings of artistic, intellectual, and ethi- 
cal culture, when regarded as instrumentalities contributing 
towards the elaboration of the Ego, not in the ordinary and 
obvious sense of personal improvement and ameliorated 
manners, or even enriched aesthetic sympathies and powers, 
but as agents for the manufacture of the stuff which is to fill 
out and substantiate the fine nature that will survive death. 
And yet from the point of view taken in the Christian 
Analysis, these instrumentalities will seldom avail much, and 
the touch of the Christ Power only can successfully develop 
the Personality so as to immortalize the Ego. But this sci- 
entific result, to those uninterested in, or contemptuous 
towards Christian Faith, will be adequate to supply a reason- 
able basis for expectation, and will be complete in itself. 



202 Man's Belief in Immortality. 

Now it will be recognized by these observers that this 
theory provides no latitudinarianism of hope in this matter. 
On the contrary, its consequences appear to us tragic and 
dispiriting. Few men can accomplish this erection of a dur- 
able Ego, few form this ideal Personality within the tapestry 
of flesh. It requires the subjection of passion, the develop- 
ment of intellect, the education of the will, and that in no 
slight measure; and to the majority of mankind, the circum- 
stances of life, the precariousness of life, the evil heritage 
of dispositions, the mere struggle for nutrition, prevent or 
impair all such efforts. The Platos and Socrates, the rare 
owners of noble minds and temperaments, and beautifying 
opportunities, may build within themselves the ethereal 
temple of a life beyond this one. But disclose the structure 
the most of us will rear, and it would probably prove a pan- 
orama of unfinished parts and imperfect elements, a botch 
in the masonry, a failure in the design. Also logically we 
may know of an actively bad Personality which will pro- 
duce its own Ego, which may have paramount claims to 
another life from its intrinsic force, but amidst an environ- 
ment of evil in which it advances to infinite badness, and 
with the accompaniment of satanic forms. 

Nor is this all. We can conceive, indeed, the conception 
is in all probability a reality, and is at any rate logically 
warranted, that Personalities may retrograde, may lose their 
potency and elements, and lapse into lower stages, and as 
they do so, gradually obliterate the Ego. If they are built 
up by the conjunction and culture of willing, thinking, and 
feeling, first, by the application of mind to body as it pre- 
pares better and more physical arrangements for its recep- 
tion ; second, by the individual exertion and conscious effort 
to appropriate these things, then they (Personalities) may 
also fall apart, wane, disintegrate, and, as people say, run 
down. And what is this but personal destruction, a sur- 



The Form and Durability of the Ego. 203 

render of immortality, a process of atrophy by which Mind 
is dislodged, and the nervous apparatus it tenanted, degraded. 
It might be said that old people, however good or great, in 
their decrepitude and dementia were parallel cases, but they 
are not. In them a process of storage has been going on, 
and their personalities are retained, but stored, quiescent, 
awaiting that final change which may resume their brilliancy 
and beauty in new bodies and in new worlds. This suicide 
of the Ego, so to speak, is a strange and terrifying spectacle. 
It can sometimes be traced by the eye of sense, but what eye 
may follow the steps of the psychological decay and ruin ? 

Finally, in contemplating the numerous human organisms 
which, on this hypothesis, may die before the Ego is de- 
veloped, or die with a weak personality, and therefore an 
ephemeral personal identity, the question of the survival of 
some souls in another life is brought in strict analogy with the 
survival of new individuals in Nature. The myriad spores of 
the puff-ball, the numerous seeds of plants, the countless eggs 
of insects, the fecundity of mammals, the spawn of fish and 
molluscan orders, the multiplication of germs, all are provi- 
sions for the perpetuation of the stock, and presuppose the 
frequency of enemies, the sharpness of competition, and 
the dangers of sterility or exhaustion. The population of the 
world has, in the aggregate of ages, heaped up an enormous 
sum of vitalized individuals, and if the fields of an after life 
are to be peopled from the workshops and nurseries of this 
life, and but a few can perfect the conditions which will give 
them immunity from the fate of absolute death, or, at best, 
partial survival, then this great sea of life presents an intel- 
ligible though humiliating raison d'etre. It is a field of 
selection, where the best endowed and the happiest placed 
secure continuance hereafter. This seems a heartless con- 
clusion, killing endeavor, humbling merit, striking at the 
roots of aspiration, perverting patience, tempting inconti- 



204 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

nence and rage. It may be heartless, it is not necessarily 
loathsome or degrading, and we shall indicate, in the final 
chapter of this analysis, that it may be made provocative of 
the highest forms of altruism and self-denial. 

We have presented the view which Science might hold and 
do its dicta and the current impressions of its teachers and 
teachings the least, violence. But physiological considera- 
tions are powerless to prove it. The reader has been inces- 
santly reminded that science offers no proof ; but a certain 
line of thought, that which we have presented, permits a sci- 
entific thinker who rejects revelation to see his way partially 
clear to an acceptance of its possibility. Certainly he may 
think the prospect dark for himself and for most of his 
friends, but he may be willing to admit, and admit joyfully, 
that to some rare and favored spirits the future beyond the 
grave is not to be a blank. 

And to the Christian believer this scientific analysis will 
prove of amazing interest if its conclusions are repeated on 
a higher spiritual plane, in a literal and in a religious sense, 
and with the sanctions and assent of revelation; while the 
despair or darkness of its main position is found to be 
anticipated and relieved in the Person of The Christ. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE FORCE OF DESIRE AND A MORAL JUDGMENT. 

Prof. J. Fiske has said : " Speaking for myself, I can see 
no insuperable difficulty in the notion that at some period in 
the evolution of Humanity this divine spark may have ac- 
quired sufficient concentration and steadiness to survive the 
wreck of material forms and endure forever." * We believe 
this expression of opinion thinly covers the speaker's hopes 
or wishes that it might be so, and his own personal expecta- 
tions to be able to meet the requirements his assumption de- 
mands. And in saying this we neither impugn nor deride 
the gravity and value of his assertion. Indeed it is a veiled 
and educated manner of saying, "I desire to. live." As 
Schopenhauer has profoundly remarked f : 

' ( Every glance at the world, to explain which is the task of the philoso- 
pher, confirms and proves that will to live, far from being an arbitrary 
hypostasis or an empty word, is the only true expression of its inmost 
nature. Everything presses and strives towards existence, if possible, 
organized existence, i. e., life, and, after that, to the highest possible grade 
of it. In animal nature it then becomes apparent that will to live is the 
keynote of its being, its one unchangeable and unconditioned quality. Let 
any one consider this universal desire for life, let him see the infinite will- 
ingness, facility and exuberance with which the will to live presses impet- 
uously into existence under a million forms everywhere and at every 
moment, by means of fructification and of germs, nay, when these are 
wanting, by means of generatio cequivoca, seizing every opportunity, 
eagerly grasping for itself every material capable of life." 

This Desire for Life, this repugnance to the thought of 
extinction, involves a reference ultimately to pleasure in a 

* " Destiny of Man." J. Fiske, p. 117. 

f "The World as Will and Idea." Schopenhauer, Vol. III., p. 107. 



2o6 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

complete sense, and as expressing the adequate and com- 
plete satisfaction of all our parts, moral, emotional and intel- 
lectual. And if it means this, it is tantamount to a, so to 
speak, psychic movement in our Personality towards satisfac- 
tion. But such a movement, to be intelligently recognized, 
must be initiated as the Ego, the Individual, arises ; as the 
Ego becomes more enduring through the advance of the 
Personality (see Chap. V.), so this Desire gains in intensity, 
expansive power, and imaginative suggestions. Thus Desire 
is referred legitimately to our Ego before it can be intel- 
ligibly regarded as having any philosophic or scientific force 
at all as assisting our Belief in a Future Life. Plainly, as we 
have seen, the individual must appear before a future life is 
predicable in any way, and therefore Desire has only quanti- 
tative value as it appears in connection with the Ego, and 
with it only. 

This is the kernel of the whole matter so far as Desire is 
concerned, and this, when explained, exhausts the scientific 
or philosophic elements of this branch of the subject almost 
entirely. 

We say that Desire for a future life has only quantitative 
value as it appears in connection with the Ego, and with it 
only. The force of this is obvious. If it could be shown 
that this Desire for a future life is manifested only at those 
periods of mental growth when, according to observation and 
the dicta we have laid down, the Sense of Personal Identity 
— the Ego — is apparent, then this yearning could, of course, 
be regarded as a psychological exponent and indication that 
the individual (in a metaphysical sense) whose birth it accom- 
panied, and by whose presence alone we establish the first claim, 
might expect a future life. This is in complete analogy 
with the spectacle of nature, and can be justly considered, a 
scientific postulate. It is in complete analogy with the specta- 
cle of nature, for there are no implanted or organic impulses, 



The Force of Desire and a Moral Judgment. 207 

impulses that attain to a measurable and substantial degree 
of potency, that are not accompanied by adequate apparatus 
and opportunities for their satisfaction. The form of the de- 
velopment of this argument is simple, and triple in nature. 
We should show that in those races or peoples where individ- 
ualism is the least evident, becoming, on the whole, equivo- 
cal or debased and lost, Desire for a Future Life is corre- 
spondingly absent or weakened, and that in those where 
individualism reaches the highest phases of presentation, De- 
sire for a Future Life is intense, irrepressible and demonstra- 
tive. This might be called the argument from phylogeny. 
Secondly, we should show that in children before the age at 
which the Sense of Personal Identity is formed, no Desire for 
a Future Life arises, or is but dimly present, but is so after 
that period. This might be called the argument from ontog- 
eny. Thirdly, we should show that in those persons where 
Personality in its three elements — willing, feeling, and think- 
ing — has reached its finest and purest states, the Desire for a 
Future Life is strong, and in those where Personality is 
impoverished, out of balance, or defective, it is not. This 
might be called the argument from psychology. It is evi- 
dent that of these three arguments, the first is perhaps the 
least vitiated by such perturbations as are introduced by con- 
trasts of individual stations in life, temperament, states of 
mind, personal experience ; all of which in the other two, at 
least the last, would, unless properly allowed for, have a ten- 
dency to depress or exhilarate Desire beyond its normal 
or diagnostic temperature. These perturbations we have 
alluded to in the first pages of our Introduction, and they will 
occur to any one upon the slightest reflection. And yet it 
seems to us possible to discriminate and eliminate the weight 
of disturbing influences so as to determine the residual force 
of Desire with reference to the perfection and balance of the 
Personality. And we are quite confident that not only is a 



208 Man s Belief in Immortality. 

general and valid conclusion on this point possible — though 
some people are happy in life and others are not, some have 
sanguine and forward-looking temperaments and others have 
not, some are brought up under the excitations of religious 
culture and others are not — but that in special instances 
where manner of life, temperament, and religious opportuni- 
ties have conspired to suppress it, an educated and beautiful 
Personality will maintain the effective force of Desire for a 
Future Life. And we say this, not meaning any special con- 
dition, or combinations of conditions, for we know that some- 
times a happy life and an unhappy life may both render 
their possessors indifferent in this matter — the former from 
satiety, the latter from fatigue. 

The argument from children is the least serviceable, as 
few suitable examples can be obtained, inasmuch as children 
are, at very tender ages, artificially inured to the Belief in 
another World as a part of their religious nurture. And yet 
we think this line of observation distinctively valuable, and 
it might come into experimental use effectively. 

Looking at the first proposition of our series, the evidence 
" should show that in those races or peoples where individ- 
ualism is the least evident, becoming, on the whole, equivocal 
or debased and lost, Desire for a Future Life is correspond- 
ingly absent or weakened, and that in those where individual- 
ism reaches the highest phases of presentation Desire for a 
Future Life is intense, irrepressible and demonstrative." 

Now individualism is the least evident in the lowest and 
more aboriginal classes of human society. This must be so, 
for it simply involves a necessary illustration of the law of 
progress which has been universally recognized, and which 
Spencer has characteristically designated as " a change from 
the homogeneous to the heterogeneous." In the lowest sav- 
age or very degraded communities there is but one type of 
life, one set of ideas, a limited and regular succession of sen- 



The Force of Desire and a Moral Judgment. 209 

sations and events, a dead level of interest ; as Spencer says : 
" Society in its first and lowest form is a homogeneous aggre- 
gation of individuals having like powers and like functions, 
the only marked difference of function being that which ac- 
companies difference of sex. Every man is warrior, hunter, 
fisherman, tool-maker, builder ; every woman performs the 
same drudgeries ; every family is self-sufficing, and, save for 
purposes of aggression and defence, might as well live apart 
from the rest." While this lasts there is no growth of per- 
sonal attributes, nothing to summon them to the surface of 
life, and to maintain and strengthen them when there. The 
whole group of separate persons becomes a herd where a 
common impulse, joy or terror, rules with an unmodified and 
very similar sway in each. Whether this be an early form of 
society or an example of retrograde development, which on 
some grounds seems more likely, it is a condition in which 
the individual is lost in the crowd, and only becomes an indi- 
vidual by numerical isolation. The Ego must be hardly or 
never realized, inasmuch as Personality — willing, thinking, 
and feeling — is itself reduced to the merest shreds of any 
psychical texture whatever. Observe, also, that this in part 
is referred to that law of the concomitancy of mind and mat- 
ter in the Ego which we have disclosed. In the lethargic 
and inanimate states of such a depauperate savagery the 
body is not variously exercised, skill of action not educated, 
acuteness or refinement of sense not advanced, delicacy and 
variety of sensual impressions not elaborated, and hence the 
more expressive unions of Mind and Matter not secured, 
upon (not by) whose alliance the Sense of Personal Identity, 
the Ego, the Individual, the corporate Soul, assumes emi- 
nence and its tension of Desire is relieved in outward acts, 
expressions of opinions and creative thought. 

A state so debased is scarcely known among savage or 
wild men. But many races approach or seem to approach it. 
14 



210 Mans Belief in Immortality, 

The Fuegians and Botocudos of South America, the southern 
Californians, the Australians, some negro tribes of Africa, 
exist in very rude and degraded forms of society. An idea 
of another life is, however, hardly ever suppressed even 
among them, for the accidents of dreaming, the shock of 
death itself, and such pathological symptoms as swoons and 
trances, suggest to the barbarian the exit of something — a 
spirit — from the body travelling in dreams, coming and 
going in swoons, returning, after death, to its earthly com- 
panions in the phantoms of night. But their attitude towards 
such a life is indifferent and careless so far as any intense 
spiritual force of Desire is concerned. Or, more correctly — 
and this bears very minutely upon our general thesis here 
— the Desire partakes of the lower qualities of Personality. 
They desire a life hereafter as an envied condition of rest, of 
feeding, of sensual satisfaction, but even in these forms their 
desire seems inert and listless. In higher scales of aborigi- 
nal life the desire for successful action in the spirit world 
arrives. Personality here assumes higher development, and 
the force and nature of Desire mounts with it. Finer forms 
of feeling succeed, and Desire for a Future Life enters into 
vocal expressions, ceremonial observances, sacrifices, and 
monuments. Personality has again advanced, and Desire 
has advanced with it. Again the elements of Personality 
are more and more developed, and Desire following it at an 
even pace, animates liturgies and prayers, influences life,, pro- 
motes morals, and assuages grief. 

In the lowest orders " we see nothing beyond an undiffer- 
entiated group of individuals forming the germ of a society.'* 
(Spencer.) Individualism is measurably absent ; Desire for 
a Future Life is measurably absent also. Let us glance at a 
few ethnic illustrations of this association. The Bushmen of 
South Africa present a very degraded and irreclaimably wild 
form of savage life. 



The Force of Desire and a Moral Judgment. 211 

" Intellectually they are but children. ... So imperfect, indeed, 
is the language of the Bojesmans, that even those of the same horde 
often find a difficulty in understanding each other without the use of 
gesture." * 

" It is stated by old travellers who have had much intercourse with the 
Bojesmans, that they have no names by which different individuals are 
distinguished."! 

" Each horde, as a general rule, consists of a single family, unless 
members of other hordes may choose to leave their own friends and join 
it. But the father of the family is not recognized as its head, much less 
does he exercise any power. The leadership of the kraal belongs to the 
strongest, and he only holds it until some one stronger than himself dis- 
possesses him. 

" In places where neither rocks nor bushes are to be found, these easily 
contented people are at no loss for a habitation, but make one by the 
simple process of scratching a hole in the ground and throwing up the 
excavated earth to windward." (Wood.) 

Dr. Lichtenstein says of a Bushman : a There was not, on 
the contrary, a single feature in his countenance that evinced 
a consciousness of mental powers, or anything that denoted 
emotions of the mind of a milder species than what belong 
to man in his mere animal nature." 

Amidst such environments and in such dispositions, the 
culture of Personality, its first and determinative growth, 
must be almost completely checked. The individual is 
diminished or obliterated, thinking is reduced to a segment 
of animal sagacity, action to the automatism of habit, and 
feeling to the crudest indulgences of appetite. And Desire 
for a Future Life seems almost extinct. The Bushman has 
none. Mentality is suppressed, and therefore those attri- 
butes and powers which evoke the Ego and project its con- 
tinuance, by the force of Desire, beyond death to pleasanter 
scenes of living, are also unknown. " A Bushman who was a 
magician, having put to death a woman, dashed the head of 
the corpse to pieces with large stones, buried her, and made 
a large fire over the grave, for fear, as he explained to Lich- 
* " Uncivilized Races of Men." Rev. J. G. Wood. f Ibid. 



212 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

tenstein, lest she should rise again and 'trouble him.'"* 
There could be no Desire, even in a weak degree, in the 
sense we use the term, in such a man, nor in a people to 
whom he ministered in the capacity of a superior. 

The Fuegians of South America are equally debased : 

" As far as can be ascertained, the Fuegians have no form of govern- 
ment. They live in small communities, not worthy of the name of tribes, 
and having no particular leader, except that the oldest man among them, 
so long as he retains his strength, is looked up to as a sort of authority. 
Their ideas of religion appear to be as ill defined as those of government, 
the only representation of religion being the conjurer, who, however, exer- 
cises but very slight influence upon his fellow-countrymen. . . . The 
Fuegian never cultivates the soil, he never builds a real house, he never 
stores up food for the future, and so it necessarily follows that when he 
has eaten all the mussels, limpets, oysters and fungi in one spot, he must 
move to another." f 

Individualism is absent here, and Desire is absent also. 

The southern Californians, before the advent of the white 
men, were in an expressionless and rudimentary state. Says 
Cabrillo J : 

" The Indians of this island are very poor ; they are fishermen ; they eat 
nothing but fish ; they sleep on the ground ; all their business employment 
is to fish. In each house they say there are fifty souls. They live very 
swinishly ; they go naked." And we learn from Sir John Lubbock that, 
according to an early missionary, Father Baegert, the Californians had 
neither a religion nor a government. " They had no magistrates, no po- 
lice, and no laws ; idols, temples, religious worship or ceremonies were 
unknown to them, and they neither believed in the true and only God nor 
adored false deities. ... I made diligent inquiries among those with 
whom I lived, to ascertain whether they had any conception of God, a 
future life, and their own souls, but I never could discover the slightest 
trace of such a knowledge. Their language has no words for ' God ' and 
'soul.' " § 

It is evident that Desire for a Future Life, even developed 

* " Origins of Civilization." Sir J. Lubbock, p. 140. 

f " Uncivilized Races of Men." Rev. J. G. Wood. 

% "Voyage of Cabrillo, Archaeology of Wheeler Survey," p. 311. 

§ "■ Origins of Civilization." Sir J. Lubbock, p. 250. 



The Force of Desire and a Moral Judgment. 213 

to a very low plane of feeling, was almost extinct among 
those Indians, and individuality, personality, strong realiza- 
tions of Self, were also, if not extinct, momentary and 
unusual. 

When we turn to societies wherein individualism attains 
prominence, there, we may now anticipate, Desire for a Fut- 
ure Life will become equally obtrusive. Nor is the former to 
be looked for in the more cultured states of civilization ; on 
the contrary, a meretricious culture levels individual traits 
and smooths the irregular contrasts of disposition by the 
swaddling and sometimes injurious bands of fashion. A 
people in the throes of national change, or working under 
the dominating impulse of some strong feeling, develop their 
personality and realize their own identity deeply. A people 
contending against difficulties, or surrounded by perils, or 
animated by the lofty enthusiasm of special and mysterious 
purposes, a people in action, become individualized, they 
seem to touch apices of exaltation, and the period is memo- 
rialized by noble writings, stalwart acts, and profound feel- 
ing.* The spirit of Desire, Expectation for a Future Life, is 
then abroad ; it may be lost sight of, it may not assume ex- 
pression except sporadically, it may be forgotten amid the 
stress of events and rapidity of action, it may be even over- 
come in natures peculiarly educated or sterile ; but it rises in 
the souls of men with a sort of thaumaturgic intensity, paint- 
ing a noble future into which they pass as heroes. If not 
allied with distinctively religious convictions, it runs parallel 
with strains of emotional and semi-pietistic excitement. It is 
inevitable ; Personality grows, the Ego becomes almost tyran- 
ically present, and the future after death takes on a vital- 

* Such a period was that of our Civil War, the Elizabethan epoch, the 
war between Greece and Persia, the Liberation of Italy, the Expulsion of 
the Stuarts, the American War for Independence, the Protestant Refor- 
mation. 



214 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

ized and delightful aspect. We do not mean that Desire 
then becomes a lachrymose and bewildered pouting for good 
things we have not got, though it may assume that form ; but 
it stands for the consolidated interests of a sound human 
being in the claim to more knowledge, more love, more 
power. The modulus and the modality of Desire advance 
together. As Desire rises with earnestness in noble minds, 
the forms of gratification become grander. 

One conclusive way of proving that development of indi- 
vidualism induces Desire would be to show that where there 
is individualism, there is religious fervor ; putting aside the 
aberrations of conduct caused by a reasoned out scepticism, 
religious fervor being used as a convenient objective index. 
And the least objectionable form of this argument would be 
its general form, rather than any particular illustration. In 
this shape it seems to us to have considerable force. Of 
course in historical crises where great issues are at stake, 
though we believe at such times Individualism and Desire rise 
together, yet at such times religious fervor very largely indi- 
cates human timidity and human supplication, and therefore 
we cannot so legitimately quote it for our purpose. Again, 
particular illustrations in religious races, as the Jews, though 
we believe there interesting and honest evidence to the truth 
of the proposition could be obtained, might be impeached on 
account of the arbitrary character of events which compelled 
them to be a missionary tribe, a national propaganda.* We 
shall, however, return to the point in the Christian Analysis, 
where, of course, its weight can be properly recorded. 

In its general form the proof is striking. Where personal- 
ity has formed or evoked the Sense of Personal Identity most 

* Certainly to all who regard the "Jewish Phenomenon" as a purely 
natural event, quite free of any supernatural admixture, this hesitation 
must seem unnecessary. Let these thinkers examine this instance for 
themselves, and note its interesting results. 



The Force of Desire and a Moral Judgment. 215 

strongly, where acts, thoughts, and feelings have so multi- 
plied as to build into language expressions for a sub-sensate 
soul or Ego, there anticipations of, Desire for, a Future Life 
have become incorporated into acts of devotion, into moral 
codes, in hymnology, and Bibles, into religious romances, 
into art, into creeds ; it maintains a statical equipoise in the 
midst of disturbances and afflictions, nay, in Christianity it 
would suppress that very Self whose first stirrings it appre- 
hended and proclaimed. And as Personality is high or low, 
so is Desire high or low ; as Personality has this or that quali- 
tative facies, so has Desire '; it is vague in the Buddhist — so is 
Desire ; it is intense in the Persian — so is Desire ; " all the 
tragedy, all the poetry, which has gathered around the con- 
ception of the individual as a boundless possibility of good 
or evil, not in this life only, but for everlasting existence, 
has its germ in the religion of Iran ; " * it is revengeful, 
iconoclastic, vituperative in the Mohammedan — so is Desire ; 
" intolerance towards rival positive religions obviously lay 
in the very nature and necessity of Islam ; " f it is concrete, 
staid, surreptitious, in the Chinese — so is Desire ; it is lofty, 
executive, passionate, in the Christian — so is Desire. But 
Personality, developed to any such phase where there can be 
Desire, involves the Ego, as its functional product, and hence 
Desire involves it also ; and hence it is true that where indi- 
vidualism is the least evident, Desire for a Future Life is 
absent, or weakened, and where individualism is strong, 
Desire is strong. We have indicated the value of this as a 
scientific consideration for the likelihood of a Future Life ; we 
shall repeat it, after looking at the two other propositions of 
our series. 

The second proposition is, that it should be shown " that 
in children before the age at which the Sense of Personal 

* "Oriental Religions : Persia." S. Johnson, p. 66. 
f Ibid., p. 682. 



216 Man's Belief in Immortality. 

Identity is formed, no Desire for a Future Life arises, or is 
but dimly present, but is so after that period." The first 
clause of this statement, while, in all likelihood, a common 
fact, might be explained naturally on various assumptions, as 
that a Future Life is a subject very young children do not 
think of, are not led to think of ; that Desire for such a state, 
in them, is an absurdity, impossible and preposterous ; the 
second clause might be equally difficult to prove at all. In 
growing childhood the healthy and unintermittent expansion 
of body and mind into larger growths is a constant stimula- 
tion of the attention to the facts arid value of life; death is an 
enormity then, an outrage, and its consequences cannot be 
thought of except with repulsion. But there might be found 
instances of intelligent children, not schooled especially to 
think according to a rule or faith, who have been brought 
in contact with death, as a phenomenon, before and after 
the period at which Personal Identity is recognized (four to 
seven years) ; and it might be observed that expressions of a 
Hope (the analogue, of course, of Desire in them) for a con- 
tinuance hereafter were evoked in the latter and not in the 
former cases. Indeed, as we have elsewhere noticed, the 
genesis and production of thought in the child would resem- 
ble that in the race ; before the period of Self-Conscious- 
ness has arrived he would, as Sir John Lubbock shows is the 
case in very degraded tribes, and as we have, in selected 
instances, pointed out, be amazed, doubtful, listless, inex- 
pectant, and helpless ; after that period the child would rise 
into clearer certainties of feeling as the race as a whole has 
done, reaching towards those beneficent and splendid hopes 
which appear where the Ego is deeply realized, and the 
apparel and furniture of Personality in thinking and willing 
and feeling multiply. 

The difficulty arises here, of course, as to that period when 
the Ego may be said to be formed, for it will vary in all 



The Force of Desire and a Moral Judgment. 217 

examples, and its interwoven components in Mind and Matter 
so gradually admixed that it will be always impossible to lay 
one's finger on the moment when the organism has become an 
individual, with the pretensions and claims of a psychological 
unit.* 

The third proposition was that it should be shown " that 
in those persons where Personality in its three elements — 
willing, feeling, and thinking — has reached its finest and pur- 
est states, the Desire for a Future Life is strong, and in those 
where Personality is impoverished, out of balance, or defec- 
tive it is not." It is evident that whatever intrinsic force 
this may have, it will be more respectable as a scientific con- 
sideration, if we quote or use such illustrations as we can 
offer which are taken from pagan life or history, and thereby 
avoid the disturbing influences of Christian thought. Dis- 
turbing, inasmuch as they deepen immensely any constitu- 
tional tendency to a belief in a future life, and inasmuch as 
they impart to that belief in some minds, otherwise acquies- 
cent, a distinct and unmistakable ugliness. 

In Cicero we are told by Forsyth f that we see a man in 
a measure " weak, timid, and irresolute ; " but that " these 
defects were counterbalanced, and in some respects redeemed, 
by the display, at critical periods of his life, of the very 
opposite qualities ; " and adds this eulogy : " His lot was cast 
in times which tried men's souls to the uttermost, and when 
boldness was as much required in a statesman as virtue. 
His moral instinct was too strong to allow him to resort to 
means of which his conscience disapproved. And if he knew 
he had acted wrongly, he instantly felt all the agony of 
remorse. Although he lived in the deep shadows of the night 

* There are some remarks on this subject in the Rev. J. A. Picton's 
" New Theories and the Old Faith," which we have never seen. It is 
mentioned by Darwin in " The Descent of Man." 

f " Life of Marcus Tullius Cicero." W. Forsyth. 



218 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

which preceded the dawn of Christianity, his standard of 
morality was as high as it was perhaps possible to elevate it 
by the mere light of Nature. And to fall below that stan- 
dard made him feel dissatisfied with himself and ashamed. 
But his constant aim was to do right ; and although he 
sometimes deceived himself, and made great mistakes, they 
were the errors of his judgment rather than of his heart." 

However much critics may smile at the vanity of Cicero, he 
remains a stalwart and impressive figure ; his learning and 
eloquence, the strong philosophic cast of his nature, and on 
the whole his impetuous and fervid espousal of earnest and 
lofty ways of looking at things, render him a noble example 
of Roman personality. Cicero in his " De Senectute " has left 
the world the record of his profound hope in another exist- 
ence. It is true he has not hesitated to regard the possibility 
of final extinction at death, but that seemed to him an alter- 
native to which he would address himself in a spirit of just 
and elevated patience and resignation. 

Quod si in hoc erro, quod animos hominum immortales esse 
credam, lubenter erro ; nee mihi hunc errorem, quo delector, 
dum vivo extorqueri volo.* 

Yet the Desire, the expectancy of another life, nourished 
by those special hopes which in Cicero sprang from a soil of 
scholarly and fraternal affection for distinguished minds, is 
strongly written in and between the lines of that expressive 
essay. 

Neque me vixisse pcenitet ; quoniam ita vixi, ut non 
frustra me natum existimem : et ex vita ita discedo, tamquam 
ex hospitio, non tamquam ex domo. Commorandi enim 
natura diversorium nobis, non habitandi locum, dedit. O 
praeclarum diem, cum ad illud divinum animorum concilium 

* If in this I err, that I believe the souls of men are immortal, I err 
willingly ; neither do I wish this error, in which I delight, taken from me 
while I live. 



The Force of Desire and a Moral Judgment. 219 

coetumque proficiscar, cumque ex hac turba et colluvione 
discedam ! * 

Plato has been called by Emerson "a balanced soul," a 
man in whom physical grace and intellectual strength, poetic 
insight and emotional intensity exquisitely concurred. Em- 
erson beautifully writes: "The mind of Plato is not to be 
exhibited by a Chinese catalogue, but is to be apprehended 
by an original mind in the exercise of its original power. In 
him the freest abandonment is united with the precision of 
a geometer. This daring imagination gives him the more 
solid grasp of facts, as the birds of highest flight have the 
strongest alar bones. His patrician polish, his intrinsic ele- 
gance, edged by an irony so subtle that it stings and para- 
lyzes, adorn the soundest health and strength of frame." f 
And again : " He is a great average man : one who, to the best 
thinking adds a proportion and equality in his faculties, so 
that men see in him their own dreams and glimpses made 
available, and made to pass for what they are. A great com- 
mon sense is his warrant and qualification to be the world's 
interpreter. He has reason, as all the philosophic and poetic 
class have : but he has, also, what they have not, — this 
strong solving sense to reconcile his poetry with the appear- 
ances of the world, and build a bridge from the streets of the 
cities to the Atlantic." In such a man Personality attains a 
monumental power. It embraces the widest scope of action, 
and thought, and feeling, and creates an egoistic life so 
intense as to become to its possessor a prophecy of another 
life. 

* Neither do I regret that I have lived ; since I have so lived as that I 
may believe I have not lived in vain : and I so leave life as though I left 
a wayside house, not my home. For it is to be noted that nature has 
given to us a tarrying place, not a place of habitation. O glorious day ! 
when I may advance to that divine council and crowd of divine minds, 
and when I may depart from this hurly burly and commixture. 

f " Representative Men : Plato, or the Philosopher." 



220 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

Plato says * in his Phaedo : " And the same may be said of 
the immortal : if the immortal is also perishable, the soul 
when attacked by death cannot perish ; for the preceding 
argument shows that the soul will not admit of death or even 
be dead, any more than three or the odd number will admit 
of the even, or fire, or the heat in the fire, of cold. . . . Yes, 
replied Socrates, all men will agree that God, and the essen- 
tial form of life, and the immortal in general, will never per- 
ish." Again he writes f in " The Republic," " And whenever 
the soul receives more of good and evil from her own energy, 
and the strong influence of others, when she has communion 
with divine virtue, and becomes divine, she is carried into 
another and better place, which is also divine and perfect in 
holiness. " 

Personality, a realization of personal efficacy and identity, 
powerfully affected these men, and in thinking upon the 
inevitable fact of life, viz., its end, in the presence of the 
unknown and among the fragments of knowledge they pos- 
sessed, Desire, in a noble sense, as a supreme and majestic 
demand for perpetuation in thought and feeling and act, 
arose and remained operative throughout life. We know 
that such a faith was not prevalent throughout the pagan 
world. " The floating and uncertain state of the human 
mind " on these questions, as Milman says, was far more the 
usual attitude of thinkers. As the same author remarks, J 
" the religious Pausanias speaks of the immortality of the 
soul as a foreign doctrine, introduced by the Chaldeans and 
Magi, and embraced by some of the Greeks, particularly by 
Plato. Pliny, whose " Natural History" opens with a decla- 
ration that the universe is the soul deity, devotes a separate 
chapter to a contemptuous exposure of the idle notion of 

* "Plato's Best Thoughts." Rev. C. H. A. Bulkley, p. 415. 

f Ibid., p. 413. 

% " History of Christianity." Rev. H. H. Milman, Chap. I. 



The Force of Desire and a Moral Judgment. 221 

the immortality of the soul, as a vision of human pride, and 
equally absurd, whether under the form of existence in 
another sphere or under that of transmigration." Desire in 
coarser forms may have arisen in society, and, in fact, some 
such insensate clamor and preternatural craving filled hea- 
thendom, and prepared the way for the spread of Christ's 
doctrine and teachings. But it failed to establish anything, 
as it does to-day ; but where it did spring from personalities 
of large proportions and intrinsic balance, there its persist- 
ency led to affirmations and reliance, to faith and modera- 
tion and delight. In the absence of any illuminated and 
divine statement, this question must have been viewed 
askance with misgivings and sceptical discontent. As Lucre- 
tius had said : 

' ' That hour perhaps 
Is not so far, when momentary man 
Shall seem no mere a something to himself. 
But he, his hopes and hates, his homes and fanes, 
And even his bones, long laid within the grave, 
The very sides of the grave itself, shall pass 
Vanishing, atom and void, atom and void, 
Into the unseen forever." 

The vulgar, the common people, those to whom the policy 
of the state and the scorn of the philosophers equally recom- 
mended the ancient worship of god and goddess, the lustra- 
tions and offices of piety, the juvenile pictures of Hades, and 
the unscrupulous equivoque of the oracles, expected, doubt- 
less, another life. But their belief was the inert passivity of 
dull heads and a laborious life, a lesson taken for granted, a 
line conned from childhood and repeated without under- 
standing, not always with affection. And the moment the 
leaven of scepticism invaded the commonalty, the moment 
the peasant and slave laughed at the images in the temples, 
or paid their vows with impatience ; when, in short, the irre- 
ligion of the upper order had worked downward upon the 
lower (Milman), then among these less enlightened orders, 



222 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

unhelped by the enlarged and copious powers of the Person- 
ality, crudely conscious of their own existence, awakened by 
no fundamental Desire for spiritual progress and knowledge, 
the light of the future was darkened. Suicide or revolt 
became the two alternatives, in their despair, with the more 
serious ; indulgence and satiety the resources of the weaker ; 
until, Personality more and more debased, Desire perverted, 
the Belief in a Future Life was completely extinguished. 
The fall in Personality precedes the fall in Desire. 

Now the scientific weight of this correlate development of 
Desire, and the structure, as it were, of Personality, is this : 
Desire for a Future Life becomes analogous to instinct in 
lower animals, and its advance to perfection along with the 
advance of a substratum upon which it is based, viz., Person- 
ality and the Ego, distinctly similar to the advance and per- 
fecting of instinct in animals, along with the elaboration of 
physical structure. And instinct, speaking in the widest run 
of instances, when developed in animals, as we know, uner- 
ringly corresponds to, and is thoroughly satisfied by, the en- 
vironment of the animal. Indeed, according to Darwin's 
views, the instinct is the result of the environment, and 
hence most harmoniously adjusted to it. But, however much 
truth there is in this position — and it certainly does not in- 
clude the whole truth — it is conceded that " all the functions 
of each brute animal, all instinctive actions included, neces- 
sarily go with structure and vary with it, structure and func- 
tion being like the convexities and concavities of a curved 
line, one necessarily accompanying the other. To explain 
either thoroughly is to explain both. . . . Thus the ' in- 
stinct ' of each animal is an abstraction denoting the faculty 
of performing that group of actions which are the inseparable 
accompaniments of its structure as stimulated by sensation." * 
The Desire for a Future Life is an accompaniment of Per- 
* " Lessons from Nature." St. Geo. Mivart, p. 237. 



The Force of Desire and a Moral Judgment. 223 

sonality, and wanes and waxes with its growth, is involved m 
the conjunction and stable welding of the components of that 
Personality, and is directly stimulated by the phenomena of 
life. The analogy, if all our previous steps are correct, 
seems perfect, and must be given some scientific value. 

Now, generally speaking, instincts are not faulted or led 
astray, and it is in complete harmony with the modern views 
of evolution that the more vivid an instinct is, the more com- 
pelling and intuitive its assertion, then the more effectively 
satisfactory or perfect will be those actions it prompts, and 
the more certain the reality of those actions it desires. If 
perfect instincts, to use Darwin's words, " can be explained 
by natural selection, having taken advantage of numerous, 
successive, slight modifications of simpler instincts," then 
their perfection is only a way of describing their accuracy 
and usefulness. If Desire for a Future Life, scarcely observ- 
able among the rudest people, has been perfected by " numer- 
ous, successive, slight modifications," and has passed through 
a series of stages in which it faithfully reflected the improv- 
ing grades of Personality, both in its intensity and in its kind, 
then when we reach its highest, most ideal, and beautiful 
phases, and its most emphatic as well, may we not then 
ascribe to it an evidential importance both striking and 
real ? 

It certainly has no force of proof, and we have constantly, 
ad nauseam, disclaimed any idea, in this analysis, of giving 
proof ; but we have adduced it as a scientific consideration, 
interesting and pertinent, as bearing on the probability of 
such a second life. 

And is it not well for us to indulge in Desire for a Future 
Life ? May we not be able to discern in its force the prog- 
ress our own Personality is making ? And though, after all, it 
be a chimera, to what extent may it not paint the horizon of 
life with beauty, how loftily it may make us carry the neck of 



224 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

aspiration, how finely fill the voids of realization with hope, 
how joyfully anticipate completed faculties, cured disorders, 
relieved bodies, and informed minds. If it arise within you, 
do not suppress it with disdain, or affect to regard it with 
humiliation. Perchance it is a true index of mitigated tem- 
per, penetrative thought, resolute designs. 

" And doubtless unto thee is given 
A life that bears immortal fruit 
In such great offices as suit 
The full-grown energies of Heaven." 

And if it arise in the race as a whole, if it grows and 
coerces life, will it not be well for society and public polity 
and national greatness ? Will it not lift action to a noble 
plane ; infuse magnanimity into our communal relations ; 
elevate station ; purify manners ; enliven drudgery, and, 
through the comprehensive law it obeys, reacting on the 
Personality, in whose depths it has arisen, raise our national 
character ? If the possibility of a Future Life is intimately 
blended with each man's present life, we shall act more gen- 
erously, more zealously, with larger views. It cannot, if prop- 
erly understood, healthfully cultivated, submerge us in sloth 
or puerile dreaming or the contaminating frenzies of religious 
fanaticism. Nay ! it will be upon us as a garment, around 
us as an atmosphere ; it will lighten our lineaments, shine in 
our homes, irradiate our work ; it will banish Death, whether 
it comes to youth on the threshold of enjoyment, or to old 
age plucking the purple clusters of experience ; it will disen- 
gage us from the fouling touch of mere animal affinities ; it 
will give us breeding, as though we would on earth train our 
mind and body for the divine courtesies of Heaven. Let it 
not go, but strengthen and adorn it. 

Also Desire springs from our Emotional Nature, and hence 
its encouragement and cultivation, if it enlivens and refines 
our feelings, improves Personality, and finally in this way 



The Force of Desire and a Moral Judgment. 225 

increases the steadiness and absolutism of the Ego. Desire 
for a Future Life in its best forms, and even in its poorer, less 
essential, and vulgar aspects, does impart a transcendental 
glow to living. 

Finally the scientific aspect of a Moral Judgment has to be 
considered. We said in our Introduction that this element 
in the Belief in a Future Life was theological, and we there- 
fore find its treatment less amenable to the requirements we 
make in this scientific examination. It, however, has regard 
to the merits or demerits of actions, to their goodness or 
badness, and hence involves ultimately the Will by which 
actions in either direction are performed. In religions it is 
apprehended under form of punishment for bad, and reward 
for good people. We decline to treat it in that aspect here. 
But, as involving the Will, it is at once brought under the cate- 
gory of our Personality and qualifies the Ego. This again 
corroborates our early statement that the three incentives 
to this faith were all logically united in the first, a Sense of 
Personal Identity. Certainly volition must involve the indi- 
vidual as much as desire does ; " the end of both is Individual- 
ity, self-realization as the unity of harmony and expansion."* 

But the Moral Judgment as requiring the Will to act, 
rightly rather than wrongly, in order to secure the benefits of 
a future life, is distinctly conservative of Personality. Per- 
sonality, as constituted of thought, will, and feeling, in order 
to produce the Ego, and in order to be made permanent in 
the higher conditions it must pass to hereafter, as we have 
already seen, must contain these elements in strength and 
perfection. The Will to act rightly, more powerfully than 
anything else exalts and ennobles natures. It is the founda- 
tion of character in an executive sense ; it indeed is inter- 
twined v/ith the trunk and roots and branches of individuality. 

* " Pleasure, Pain, Desire, and Volition." F. H. Bradley, Mind^ 
Jan., 1888. 

15 



226 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

Without it the individual becomes a wavering apparition 
without stability and without place. As Prof. Ferrier says : * 
"Though man is a sentient and passionate creature, with- 
out his will, he is not a conscious or percipient being (?), 
not an ego, even in the slightest degree, without the concur- 
rence and energy of his volition. Thus early does human 
will come into play : thus profoundly down in the lowest 
foundations of the ego is its presence and operations to be 
found." 

But under the conditions of life, as we know them, to will 
to act rightly is an exercise which renovates and exhilarates 
and strengthens the Will. To overcome resistance is the 
method by which functions and parts of the physical system 
improve in size and power. And the same sequence obtains 
in the Mind. The will which follows the best paths of con- 
ducts, and resists the flagitious influences of idleness or 
fatigue or vice, will become paramount and vigorous. Ac- 
companied and assisted by Desire, in its best guise, it will 
consolidate the Personality, and give to thought an objective 
presentation in acts, and so establish the Ego. Thus a Moral 
Judgment as an incentive to a Belief in a Future Life is seen 
to be a self-preservative instinct. It intends to strengthen 
the Personality from which the Ego arises, which in turn 
forms the ground of the Belief itself. It is an involuntary 
and perspicacious protest and warning, somehow developed 
in human nature as it attains to higher phases of existence, 
that good actions preserve the identity of man, that they 
thereby insure his individual perpetuation ; it says that bad 
actions invalidate the identity of man, disperse and disinte- 
grate and abolish it. Considered here as a scientific question 
we put aside the religious form of it, as that good and bad 
acts appertain equally to immortal beings, but that their 

* Introduction to " The Philosophy of Consciousness." J. F. Ferrier, p. 
147. 



The Force of Desire and a Moral Judgment. 227 

respective destinies hereafter will be appropriately and respect- 
ively sweet or bitter. Science does not regard this theological 
interpretation. Science sees in this Moral Judgment an 
instinct of conservation such as she finds developed in the 
brute world, an instinct of conservation looking towards the 
individual's spiritual perpetuity, perverted and disturbed, 
indeed, by anthropomorphic conceptions of giving and tak- 
ing, presents and penalties. From this point of view the 
Moral Judgment has a scientific weight not to be under- 
rated. 

We have in a previous place alluded tentatively to a 
Personality of Wickedness, which also by its intrinsic force 
generates the Ego and may claim immortality. We believe 
there is a fund of terrible truth in this, though we also 
believe that that sort of Personality is a thousand times 
more rare than even the Personality of Goodness. That it 
may exist seems logically warranted ; and if it does exist, its 
residence hereafter, in order for it to retain life, must be in 
an environment correspondent to itself, with which it is in 
organic unison, and by which under the impetus of growth, 
it becomes egregiously enlarged. This is an awful thought 
and we regard it with misgivings. It, at any rate, brings a 
purely scientific view of the case en rapport with a purely 
theological one in regard to the force of the Moral Judgment. 



CHAPTER VII. 

CONCLUSION. 

We have completed our scientific review of this question, 
and the result is what we had previously anticipated : no 
proof whatever has been offered of a future life, because the 
customary proofs, outside of revelation, are valueless and 
impertinent. But weighty and interesting propositions have 
been formulated as the logical results of observation, and of 
the hypothesis we started out with. A resume is necessary 
for an appreciation of their exact force and extent. 

We began with an explicit assumption that the belief in a 
future life rested philosophically upon a Sense of Personal 
Identity, Desire, in the widest sense, for it, and a Moral 
Judgment that it provides compensation for good, and pun- 
ishment for bad acts. The latter consideration we called 
theological, pointed out that it had distinct reference to the 
will as determining action, and that both it and Desire were 
primarily included in the Sense of Personal Identity. In the 
Introduction we showed the force of these three factors in 
the belief, and found their actual presentation in ethnic 
religions. We then established the Sense of Personal Iden- 
tity by a very wide appeal to all schools of philosophy, and 
found it was very thoroughly recognized and incorporated in 
their dicta. The implications of a Sense of Personal Identity 
were found to be first, of course, the fact (or assumed fact) 
of Personal Identity and Self-Consciousness ; then from Self- 
Consciousness, on the one hand, Consciousness in a generic 
sense, and again from it Mind ; the fact of Personal Identity, 
on the other hand, involved also Mind as an implication ; and 



Conclusion. 229 



finally Mind, as obtained as an implication, both in a Sense of 
Personal Identity and Personal Identity itself, was described 
as consisting of Willing, Thinking, and Feeling, and the sub- 
ject willing, thinking, and feeling, or Personality and the 
Ego. As Ego was in Mind, and as the Ego itself formed the 
basis of our philosophic acceptance of a future life, then 
there was something in Mind that presumably extricated it 
from the accidents and disappearance of organized matter. 
This we called its immateriality, and laid some stress upon 
the fact of the absolute separation in nature between Mind 
and Matter. As Mind thus became the matrix, so to speak, 
of the immortal principle, we started the inquiry as to the 
origin of Mind in the world, and also as to when the Ego, the 
basis of our immortality, and itself in Mind, came into exist- 
ence. This subject was treated in Chapters III. and IV., and 
revealed an extraordinary spectacle ; nothing less than the 
growth of Mind in Nature through a system of concomitancy 
by which, as forms proper for its reception came or come into 
being, the precipitation of Mind increased until, as willing, 
thinking, and feeling — the Personality — are strengthened or 
deepened, Consciousness, associated with Mind in its lowest 
phases, becomes Self-Consciousness, and the Ego is recog- 
nized, which is equivalent to our statement that the durability 
of Mind increases as the elements of Personality strengthen, 
and the Ego comes into greater and greater statical control 
of all. We laid especial emphasis on the union of mind and 
matter in this process, and on its becoming more and more 
absolute, because more extended, as forms develop, until we 
reached the Ego, when mind became thoroughly involved in 
matter. W T e believed that the Ego did not appear in animals, 
though no objection was made to such a supposition, and 
that it appeared after birth in children, upon whom, as they 
developed in and out of the womb, more and more store of 
mind, as it were, descended until, the Ego being formed, the 



230 Maits Belief in Immortality. 

organism became self-centred, and a process of self-initiated 
improvement and growth began. Similarly in races its ap- 
pearance might be sporadic, or even universally suppressed, 
in all which cases no individual claim to immortality could 
be made. These conclusions having been reached, and soma 
indication having been obtained as to the way in which Mind 
becomes durable as individualized, we turned to an exami- 
nation of the durability, in its turn, of this Ego, which repre- 
sents the unity of Mind. 

The Ego, it was naturally presumed, permitted the en- 
trance of the individual upon another life ; but, as all evo- 
lution taught an advance in which new complexities of envi- 
ronment were responded to by new correlate complexities in 
organization, and as upon the perfection of this response the 
permanence of the organism depended, so, in the advance of 
the conditions which would probably supervene upon death, 
the Ego, to maintain itself, must be strengthened. And this 
strengthening could be accomplished in but one way : by the 
improvement of the Personality — willing, thinking, and feel- 
ing. We realized the truth of this in life, since the Sense of 
Identity is strongest with those in whom Personality attains 
loftiness and intensity ; and also alluded to the probable diffi- 
culty for most people to bring themselves up to any adequate 
degree of excellence in these elements. The evolution of 
creatures in Nature showed us this correspondence to environ- 
ment in homogeneity, in heterogeneity, in time, space, com- 
plexity, speciality, etc., and we were forced to conclude that 
a similar development of Personality, reaching higher and 
higher stages, must .take place here, before the Ego could 
endure long hereafter. This suggested the singular idea of 
other deaths after this life. In the same chapter we treated 
the question of the form of the Ego, by which we were led to 
believe that the Ego arises whenever an expanded contact be- 
tween Mind and Body had occurred. No effort was made to 



Conclusion. 231 



be detailed or definite here as to the exact amount of Mind 
present at that moment. This conclusion, however, per- 
mitted us to see that the life beyond this one would, if in 
analogy with the facts recorded, be one of Mind and Body. 

We then examined the scientific aspects of Desire and a 
Moral Judgment. The first we found varied with the inten- 
sity of Personality and the Ego, and hence, on the general 
basis of deduction furnished by nature, afforded us some 
guarantee that it was a truly prophetic and veracious indica- 
tion of some possible immortality. The Moral Judgment or 
theological element was simply treated as referrible to a self- 
preservative instinct. This whole investigation leaves us in 
the possession of a strong probability that there is for some 
of us another life, a fair suggestion of what it may include, 
and a reasonable basis for experimental effort in our own 
and others' behalf. 

If asked for any concrete examples of a second life, or any 
illustrative phenomena of what it may be, we must make, for 
scientific precision, an unqualified denial. The wretched 
tricks of professional spiritualism, the jugglery of mediums, 
the idiotic methods of the seance, offer no grounds for any 
conviction or even an approximate judgment of what a 
second life may be. The results so far reached by the Sey- 
bert Commission, as expressed in their report, are entirely 
inconclusive and unsatisfactory. Dr. Furness, one of the 
Commission, writes : * " I have been thus thwarted at every 
turn in my investigations of Spiritualism, and found fraud 
where I had looked for honesty, and emptiness where I had 
hoped for fulness." Dr. Leidy confirms this statement. He 
says : f " As the result of my experience thus far, I must 
confess that I have witnessed no extraordinary manifestation 
such as we ordinarily hear described as evidence of commu- 

* ''Preliminary Report Seybert Commission." H. H. Furness, p. 159. 
f Ibid., p. 103. 



232 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

nication between this and the spirit world. On the contrary, 
all the exhibitions I have seen have been complete failures in 
what was attempted or expected, or they have proved to be 
deceptions and tricks of jugglery, sometimes accompanied by 
buffoonery. I never saw in them anything solemn or im- 
pressive, and never did they give the slightest positive infor- 
mation of interest." In the curious and romantic field of 
legendary story, haunted houses, fatalistic apparitions, dreams 
and premonitions, there is nothing which the less poetic tem- 
per of scientific scrutiny can accept as even symptomatic of 
something belonging to ethereal airs. 

Finally, if we are content to rest with our results, and are 
averse to turn to those pages of Revelation which some ac- 
cept as containing a veritable and trustworthy answer to our 
inquiries as to immortality, what measure of comfort does 
this review afford, or on what more intelligible grounds does 
it place the enigma of existence ? In a sentence, our result is, 
that a Future Life is a natural expectation for the most of 
men and women on the assumption that the Ego can survive 
the material death of the body, but that its permanence here- 
after is dependent on the fineness and grade of the Person- 
ality. Therein lies an optional element : we can ourselves 
scientifically work for the security of our individual immor- 
tality by cultivating thought, emotion, and will, and we can 
help others to, and among the great variety of means in 
art, knowledge, society, religion, which are afforded by the 
world, we must be industriously availing ourselves of all such 
aids, as self-examination prove to us are essential for our 
psychological development, in quite the same way as an ath- 
lete completes his muscular balance and functional unity by 
building up the weak parts of his system, and by reducing 
awkwardness or defective action, irrelevant excrescences, or 
injurious tendencies. 

We have reached also very fairly the conclusion, that if we 



Conclusion. 233 



survive death, we are yet mind and body; and while the latter 
may comport more exquisitely to the tissue of the former, we 
are yet in the realm of our customary feelings and states, 
however much exalted. 

Thus in its totality the world becomes a training-school for 
Heaven, in which great numbers fail, or will, in all proba- 
bility ; in which the pitiless indifference of fate endows some 
with energy and faculty, and adds, as if in a fit of relent- 
less scorn, opportunity; while to others it darkens the gate of 
wisdom, closes the avenues of hope, shuts out the messengers 
of joy, defiles the body with sickness, kills ambition, and 
punishes resistance. Human Nature is thrown into an arena 
in which all animal life also struggles, and they only who are 
best equipped will survive, they only will pass into life beyond 
this one. We have said this seems heartless, but it is not 
degrading, and may stimulate the loftiest altruistic faith. 
This view also has a certain intellectual robustness and con- 
gruity. 

It teaches the loftiest altruistic faith, because it teaches that 
whatever outcome attends the endeavor we must all strug- 
gle for our own perfection, and thereby aid that of the Race. 
We must all work together so to improve ourselves that 
the heritage of our improvement passing on may revive in 
other men new or stronger powers, and they, thus gifted, win 
the prize we could not win. What more sublime realization 
of self-sacrifice is possible ! This is something better than 
that deadly thought of Schopenhauer that the species sur- 
vives, the individual perishes. As he says, " to the eye of a 
being of incomparably larger life, which at one glance com- 
prehended the human race in its whole duration, the con- 
stant alternation of birth and death would present itself as 
a continuous vibration, and accordingly it would not occur 
to it at all to see in this an ever new arising out of nothing 
and passing into nothing : but just as to our sight the quickly 



234 Maris Belief in Immortality. 

revolving spark appears as a continuous circle, the rapidly 
vibrating spring as a permanent triangle, the vibrating cord 
as a spindle, so to this eye the species would appear as that 
which has being and permanence, death and life as vibra- 
tions." * 

No, the individual lives, and when he arises he represents 
the fruitage of a society which itself was made possible by 
innumerable ameliorations, innumerable efforts, and innumer- 
able failures. He is the crest of a wave whose movement 
and whose parts, storm and suffering and the commingled 
sum of numerous smaller waves have erected. He crosses 
the threshold of Death, and enters the Future, and is installed 
amid its glories and tasks, as the product of many other 
men in whom the vital spark did not have the proper meas- 
ure of concentration, but whose frustrated hopes have made 
his own reasonable. If, on an Agnostic basis, such as that 
assumed in this essay, we all endeavor to perfect ourselves, 
careless of motives of self-promotion and self- adulation, care- 
less indeed whether we survive or perish, but only careful 
that we bring thought and willing and feeling to the most ele- 
vated pitch we can reach, then we have acted in conformity 
with the noblest precepts, and may also unawares, after the 
wave of Death has dashed over us, find ourselves standing on 
a shore upon whose sands the Sun of Eternal Life perpetually 
shines. 

The question which is doubtless springing to the lips of 
every reader, and which insensibly blurs the clearest intel- 
lectual vision of another life, must now be met : "How do 
we pass into new forms, and where do we go ? " The first 
part of this question for the first time reveals the enormous 
difficulty which man encounters when unaided by anything 
outside of his own efforts in attempting to secure that se- 
cond life. We have seen that Personal Identity entitles us to 
* " The World as Idea and Will." Schopenhauer, Bk. IV., Chap. XLI. 



Conclusion. 235 



expect a future life in the abstract, that its duration will 
depend on the durability of that Personal Identity, and that 
Personal Identity itself increases in reality as Personality — 
willing, thinking, and feeling — improves, that all these terms 
are embraced in Mind, and that Mind, up to the point where 
the Personality, Identity, became fixed, was administered 
from outside, and pressed into Matter by a power other than 
itself and other than Matter ; but that when Mind became in- 
volved extendedly in Matter and the Ego was formed, then 
the organism, the human unit, became self-determinative, a 
so-called free agent, a responsible being, etc. What is the 
consequence ? Evidently, that, after Death, the Ego, to 
assume a material form, which we saw (Chap. V.) must 
be its condition, is forced to a creative act. It creates its 
own body. The action from outside ceases when the Ego is 
reached, and the process must then be continued by the 
Person, and the Person must so develop Personality that it 
can survive the shock of the disappearance of its earthly 
inclosure, and confront and meet the instantaneous demand 
made upon it to form a new body with celerity and with ease. 
We then may appreciate the assertion of St. Thomas Aqui- 
nas, " that the soul gives the human body not only humanity 
but corporeity." 

We have come to this conclusion logically. If there is any 
reason for Science to speak hopefully of a Future Life, it 
must speak in some such, or in exactly such a way as this. 
Are we not justified in alluding to it, as placing in the ordi- 
nary man's path " an enormous difficulty," and one which, 
unaided, he may scarcely overcome ? But there are helps 
and agencies to be used which cannot be considered here. 
We only indicate how vast must be the acquired powers of 
Person, how absolute the concentration of psychic force, how 
intense and abundant the flow and substance of Mind, to 
bring to the Ego, the Soul, its proper investiture of material 



236 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

parts, and launch it, renewed in its molecular expression, upon 
a transcendental life. We see, as we saw above, that only a 
few unaided can, in the given circumstances of life, attain a 
second existence ; to use the language of another, * " that 
the countless myriads of conscious slaves of the Inevitable, 
throughout the past, and throughout the continuing present, 
must still go on towards individual death and annihilation, 
while still suffering, toiling, hungering, and despairing for the 
benefit of some unknown " individuals mentally, morally, and 
emotionally better made and better nurtured. The sublime 
heroism of devotion and patience is yet left to us, " and 
since," as Spencer says, " as a society advances in organiza- 
tion, the inter-dependence of its parts increases, and the well- 
being of each is more bound up with the well-being of all," it 
may result that " the stuff a great soul is made of " may be 
more and more furnished in the raw, to be worked up into 
more and more immortal lives ; and so, though we ourselves 
slip through the fingers of Eternity, to fall away unnumbered 
and unknown, the ranks of the imperishable hosts may con- 
stantly increase. 

And in regard to the exact configuration these dynamic 
units of soul-power may assume, as we have seen (Chap. V.) 
how the Mind masters and expresses itself in the body, so in 
a more exquisite manner it will fittingly utter its nature in 
shape and feature hereafter. " Those lines of physiognomy 
which channelled by will the map of inward life, which years 
of consistent thought and action trace upon the countenance ; 
the hue that to an observant eye indicates almost the daily 
vocation ; the air suggestive of authority or obedience, firm- 
ness or vacillation ; the glance of the eye, which is the meas- 
ure of natural intelligence and the temper of the soul ; the 
expression of the mouth, that infallibly betrays the dispo- 
sition ; the tint of the hair and mould of features not only 

* " The Divine Problem." E. W. McComas, p. 424. 



Conclusion. 237 



attesting the period of life, but revealing what that life has 
been, whether toilsome or inert, self-indulgent or adventurous, 
careworn or pleasurable, — these and such as these records of 
humanity " * are well known to us on earth ; with what an 
ineffable succinctness and propriety may we not anticipate 
their repetition and transfiguration hereafter ! 

And as to where they go. Why, this question is unwise. 
Go out into the night and look upward, and then recall the 
language Byron puts into the mouth of Cain : 

" Oh thou beautiful 
And unimaginable ether ! and 
Ye multiplying masses of increased 
And still increasing lights ! What are ye ? what 
Is this blue wilderness of interminable 
Air, where ye roll along, as I have seen 
The leaves along the limpid streams of Eden ? 
Is your course measured for ye ? Or do ye 
Sweep on in your unbounded revelry 
Through an aerial universe of endless 
Expansion, at which my soul aches to think, 
Intoxicated with eternity ? " 

Surely there are places enough ; and as to the exact place, 
of what consequence is that ? The motion of the liberated 
spirit must be as rapid a's thought, and with an infallible 
honesty it will seize upon and imprint itself in matter, just 
as, and just where, its own scope of psychic power directs 
it. As to whether the Soul, the Ego, may reside on earth, 
a very conservative or strict view of the scientific consid- 
erations we have adduced would be inclined to discounte- 
nance it. Inasmuch as the Ego must be able to pass into 
higher or lower forms out of accord with the conditions 
supplied here, in order to exist hereafter at all, it would 
not be likely or it would be impossible for it to remain 

*Tuckerman in ''Life and Works of Gilbert Stuart." G. C. Mason, 
p. 25. 



238 Mans Belief in Immortality. 

on earth. It cannot pass into other growing individuals, 
because then it would destroy itself and them, and more par- 
ticularly because the process of manufacture of the Ego is in 
every case, by the descent, as we have seen, of unindivi dual- 
ized Mind into the growing framework of the child in and 
out of the womb, in exact conformity to the details and receptiv- 
ity of that framework. The Individual perfected and out of 
the body, so to speak, cannot combine with any physiological 
embryo simply because it is individualized, and not unindi- 
vidualized, mind. It is given, by the fact of its being an 
Individual, its own destiny. 

There are other questions " more curious than edifying," 
which no one can be called upon to discuss ; as, for instance, 
that very question Cotta asks in the thirty-third Chapter, 
Book I., of Cicero's " De Natura Deorum," about the gods who 
have human forms : " Habebit igitur linguam Deus, et non 
loquetur : dentes, palatum, fauces, nullum ad usum : quaeque 
procreationis causa natura corpori affixit, ea frustra habebit 
Deus : nee externa magis, quam interiora ; cor, pulmones, 
jecur, caetera ; quae detracta utilitate quid habent venusta- 
tis ? " 

Drop these speculations, the weeds of literal minds. As 
Mr. Gregg has said : " Why seek after a fidelity of delinea- 
tion or an etherealization of conception of which the conse- 
quences must be so fatal and benumbing ? Heaven will be, 
if not what we desire now, at least what we shall desire then. 
If it be not contracted to our human dreams, those dreams 
will be expanded to its vast reality. If it be not fitted for us, 
we shall be prepared for it. In the true sense, if not in our 
sense, it will be a scene of serene felicity, the end of toil, the 
end of strife, the end of grief, the end of doubt — a Temple, 
a Heaven, and a Home ! "* All this it will be to those who 
can attain it, scientifically, as it were, and unaided. They 

* " Enigmas of Life." W. R. Gregg, p. 301. 



Conclusion. 239 



must be few. Let us turn to the Christian Analysis of this 
question, which supplements our scientific conclusions and 
preserves our confidence in God's universe by showing us 
those efficacious means and that beneficent system by which 
the human race becomes embraced in the unqualified inten- 
tions of Eternal Mercy. 



PART II. 



THE ANALYSIS FROM REVELATION. 



Three messengers to me from heaven came, 

And said : ' ' There is a deathless human soul — 
It is not lost, as is the fiery flame 

That dies into the undistinguishing whole. 
Ah, no ; it separate is, distinct as God — 

Nor any more than He can it be killed ; 
Then, fearless give thy body to the clod, 

For naught can quench the light that once it filled ! " 

Three messengers — the first was human LOVE ; 

The second voice came crying in the night 
With strange and awful music from above — 

None who have heard that voice forget it quite ; 
BIRTH is it named. The third— Oh, turn not pale ! 
'Twas DEATH to the undying soul cried, Hail ! 

— R. W. Gilder. 

16 



CHAPTER I. 

THE INDIVIDUAL IN CHRISTIANITY. 

The scientific analysis we have completed, if candidly 
treated, must, we think, leave a deep impression that, however 
restricted in its distribution, and difficult of attainment, a 
future life may, in a general way, be considered a possibility. 
But only that, and only that to those who have schooled 
their faculties and have been blessed with chances to enlist 
their own finer energies for its solution. Leave the world 
alone with that possibility only, resting in the minds of the 
educated few, and even with them bedaubed with aesthetic 
ravings and selfishness, and what wide and beneficent use 
can it serve ? How can a possibility smother the urgent 
pangs of working, and toiling, and saddened thousands ? 
What basis of practical and vigorous nobility of conduct, for 
the most of men, can be made out of a possibility ? How 
can a possibility, and one established on purely philosophic 
grounds, assuage the grief of bereavement, or put to flight 
swarms of besetting doubts ? How far does & possibility sat- 
isfy the requirements of this tempted and begrimed world, 
or what salutary stimulus does it administer to the govern- 
ment of moral systems, or even to the weaker day-dreams of 
imaginative aspiration ? Moral culture and altruistic zeal 
may seem to promise great results, and, with certain well- 
tempered natures, may really effect them, though it can 
bring no glimpse or any sign from beyond the impenetrable 
gloom of Death, though it offer at the mediatorial hands of 
Science only a. possibility in answer to the 

" Obstinate questionings 
Of sense and outward things ; " 



244 The Analysis from Revelation. 

though it itself turn with "blank misgivings" from the 
Sphinx of Creation and plunge hundred-handed into the 
necessary and wise philanthropies of to-day, and to-morrow, 
and next week. This may be enough for many, and to 
those whose quick self-confidence and indestructible power 
of hope overrides the hampering limitations of any set of 
notions, and whose lot in life has supplied them with refresh- 
ing interests and comfortable and pleasing neighborhoods, 
something or all of Miss Martineau's exultation in this 
position may be felt. Miss Martineau writes, in her auto- 
biography : " I am more and more sensible, as I recede from 
the active scenes of life, of the surpassing value of a philoso- 
phy which is the natural growth of the experience and study 
— perhaps I may be allowed to say, the progression of a 
life. While conscious, as I have ever been, of being encom- 
passed by ignorance on every side, I cannot but acknowl- 
edge that philosophy has opened my way before me, and 
given a staff into my hand, and thrown a light upon my path, 
so as to have long delivered me from doubt and fear. It has, 
moreover, been the joy of my life, harmonizing and animat- 
ing all its details, and making existence itself a festival. 
" Day by day do I feel that it is indeed 

' Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, 
But musical as is Apollo's lute.' 

" A state like mine of late has its peculiar privileges, the 
first felt of which is its freedom from cares and responsi- 
bilities." 

But it is madness to expect to appease the insatiable clamor 
of humanity with this, it seems to us, worse madness to-day 
than it ever was before, singular as that may sound. Some 
sort of certainty, some voice, even if misapprehended or 
misinterpreted in all the tones or words of its message, is 
needed, and urgently needed, and always was and always 
will be ; because Science and Philosophy can never make 



The Individual in Christianity. 245 

out of this question of a Future Life anything more than 
a possibility, and further, because all scientific study and 
philosophic cogitation will only make out that, as far as 
they are concerned, it never can be anything else but a 
possibility. Science and Philosophy in other days may have 
been ductile enough to men's inclinations ; to-day they regard 
those inclinations quite fearlessly and offer to them — all they 
have to offer — with austere sincerity — a hope. "So that," to 
quote Bishop Butler,* "to say revelation is a thing super- 
fluous, what there was no need of, and what can be of no ser- 
vice, is, I think, to talk quite wildly and at random. Nor would 
it be more extravagant to affirm that mankind is so entirely 
at ease in the present state, and life so completely happy, 
that it is a contradiction to suppose our condition capable of 
being in any respect better." 

Now the Christian World possesses a Revelation, and one 
of very extraordinary dimensions and value. We are not 
called upon to discuss its credibility,! its perversions, or all 
its contents. Inasmuch as the question, " Whether we are to 
live in a future state, is the most important question which 
can possibly be asked, and is the most intelligible one which 
can be expressed in language " (Butler), we are entitled to 
expect from any Revelation, worthy of the name, some defi- 
nite and coherent conclusion, and facts concerning it, and 
there can be very little doubt that the Christian Revelation 
furnishes both. If those facts and conclusions are coincident 
or concurrent with, and, in an ascertainable way confirma- 
tory of, the facts and conclusions of our scientific analysis, 
then these latter lose their hypothetical expression, and the 
Revelation itself is recommended to a wider audience of 

*" Analogy of Religion." Bishop Joseph Butler, Pt. II., Chap. I. 

f To our own minds what might be called its incredibility is the best 
evidence to its truth. This argument admits of much amplification and 
involves the very idea and consistency of Revelation itself. 



246 The Analysis from Revelation. 

thought and criticism. For, observe, we speak in this analysis 
as believers. We accept the Revelation so far as its main 
and essential principles and statements go. We are not at 
all doubtful as to its absolute and unapproachable superiority 
over all other so-called revelations. Its claim to supreme 
consideration, so far as this essay is concerned, is for us 
established. That is practically settled the world over, 
among the fairest scholars, wejhink, and at any rate cannot 
be discussed here. The Christian Revelation speaks with an 
authority which no other approaches, and with a reasonable 
precision of language which is priceless and unexcelled. And 
therefore for our purposes here it is the only one worthy of 
exegetical scrutiny ; it is the only one to which we can refer 
with any confidence, or even any reverence. 

At the outset we may expect to find Christianity reenforc- 
ing the three primary instigations to a belief in a future life 
which we have reviewed in the introduction, and whose 
scientific bases and relations and value have been given in 
the previous study. And if Revelation emphasizes them, 
then its sanction gives them an ethical import, that is the 
Believer, and, while it makes them important, it appears to, 
or does, impart to them certainty. And first, in regard to our 
Sense of Personal Identity, the Christian Revelation unwav- 
eringly, and in all manners of ways, asserts our Sameness, 
at all points and stages and ages of life. There can be no 
doubt whatever as to that. The language of Christianity, 
the entire significance of its appeals to individuals, the dras- 
tic and summary statements it makes about responsibility, 
its reiteration of the necessity of preparation, self-examina- 
tion, personal honor, steadfastness, persistency, striving, its 
recognition of sin as unforgiven unless repented of, the 
countless shades of religious meaning involved in Christ's 
parables, miracles, sentences, beatitudes, must rest primarily, 
to have the force theologians evidently give them, upon the 



The Individual in Christianity. 247 

Sameness, the Identity of the Individual from one end of his 
personal existence to the other. The entire intelligibility 
of the ethics of Christianity rests upon this fact ; disturb it, 
above all destroy it, and the simplest provisions made by the 
system for the reproof and correction of immorality are nulli- 
fied. 

In regard to Desire, the Christian believer is constantly 
reminded that his hopes are to*be directed towards a possible 
future state of spiritual happiness. 

"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust 
doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal : 

" But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor 
rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. 

"For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." (St. Matt. 
vi. , 19, 20, 21.) 

And a notable representative of Christian faith writes : * 
" For it is infallibly certain that there is a heaven for all the 
godly, and for me among them all, if I do my duty. But 
that I shall enter into heaven is the object of my hope, not 
of my faith : and is so sure, as it is certain I shall persevere 
in the ways of God." Indeed Desire for a Future Life is so 
strongly inculcated in Christian doctrine as to form a possible 
vice in the bearing and behavior of zealots, and ecstatics, 
fanatics and pietists. It may retard exertion and stultify 
thought, and plunge a man into the rabid dreams of self- 
immolation and self-conceit. Yet Desire for a Future Life 
illuminates the Christian life also, and, properly nurtured, 
enlivens his sense of duty, and frustrates the tendencies of 
sloth and sickness. 

A Moral Judgment as bearing on the Future Life, as that 
goodness will be rewarded and badness punished, is distinctly, 
repeatedly, and vigorously promulgated by the Christian rev- 
elation : 

*" Holy Living and Holy Dying." Jeremy Taylor. Of " Hope." 



248 The Analysis from Revelation. 

" When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the angels with 
him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory. 

"And before him shall be gathered all nations : and he shall separate 
them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats : 

" And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the 
left. 

"Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye 
blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the 
foundation of the world. 

" For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat : I was thirsty, and ye 
gave me drink : I was a stranger, and ye took me in : 

" Naked, and ye clothed me : I was sick and ye visited me : I was in 
prison, and ye came unto me. 

" Then shall the righteous answer him saying: Lord, when saw we 
thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? 

" When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in ? or naked, and 
clothed thee? 

' ' Or when saw we thee sick or in prison, and came unto thee ? 

" And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto 
you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my 
brethren, ye have done it unto me. 

" Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from 
me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels : 

"For I was an hungered, and ye gave me no meat : I was thirsty, 
and ye gave me no drink : I was a stranger, and ye took me not in : 
naked, and ye clothed me not : sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. 

"Then shall they also answer him, saying : Lord, when saw we thee 
an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or sick, or naked, or in prison, and 
did not minister unto thee ? 

"Then shall he answer them, saying: Verily I say unto you, Inas- 
much as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. 

" And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the right- 
eous into eternal life." (St. Matthew, xxv. 31-46.) 

Here seems to be enunciated, by its Teacher, the whole 
doctrine of the Moral Judgment, except that the offences 
named are less moral derelictions than sins against human 
brotherhood and love. 

And the great Apostle St. Paul says : 

* This language applies to those who professing Christ practically 
deny him ; to those whose life is a lie. See Conclusion. 



The Individual in Christianity. 249 

" Be not deceived ; God is not mocked : for whatsoever a man soweth, 
that shall he also reap. 

" For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption ; but 
he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." 
(Galatians, vi. 7, 8.) 

Dr. Moehler says : " The contempt of God's command- 
ments on the part of these, and, still more, the grievous vio- 
lation of them by a believer, is, even in case of amendment, 
deservedly punishable, and must be atoned for."* And 
Bishop Taylor writes : f "It is necessary that every man 
should consider that since God hath given him an excellent 
nature, wisdom and choice, an understanding soul, and an 
immortal spirit, having made him lord over the beasts, and but 
a little lower than the angels, he hath also appointed for him 
a work and a service great enough to employ those abilities, 
and hath also designed him to a state of life after this to 
which he can only arrive by that service and obedience." 

Thus these three natural sentiments which we have found 
efficaciously inducing men to believe in a Future Life in cer- 
tain ethnic faiths, are recognized and sustained in the ele- 
ments and text of the Christian Revelation. We have seen 
to what degree they possess scientific weight, and that not 
inconsiderable, and have been led to observe their common 
origin in the first one of all, viz., our Sense of Personal Iden- 
tity, and we shall now learn the remarkable form this truth 
assumes in the Revelation of Christ. Nothing less than this : 
that the Identity of the Christian as a Member of Christ 
depends on the Identity, the Ego, of Christ Himself j and, as 
we have seen, the Ego is a functional product of Personality 
(Scientific Analysis) ; then it also depends upon the Personality 
of Christ, BUT to depend upon the Personality, in the spirit of 
Catholic Theology, it must partake of the Personality, and to 

* "Symbolism." J. A. Moehler, p. 226. 

f " Holy Living and Holy Dying." J. Taylor, Chap. I. 



250 The Analysis from Revelation. 

partake of that, Christ has instituted a scheme of Sacraments by 
which He Himself, His Personality, is participated in, and 
appropriated by, His followers. We make this statement with 
security, and yet with a kind of terror. What heights of con- 
templation does it not open up, to what a sublime pinnacle 
does it not carry that principle of Identity which we, by un- 
aided reason, have before reviewed, when it makes our Same- 
ness one with Christ's, who, by the express purport of His 
advent, was and is One with God ! If, then, our Identity is 
involved with Christ's, and He is God, with what an invincible 
steadiness may the Christian not say, " I believe in the Life 
everlasting," with what a profound intelligence may he not 
read Christ's own prayer, " I in them, and thou in me, that 
they may be made perfect in one." To him there can be but 
one further inquiry, " In what way may I become partaker in 
that Personality of Christ ? " Here, again, our scientific in- 
vestigation enlightens us, while it exactly accords with Catho- 
lic Christian instruction. Personality we denned as willing, 
thinking, and feeling, and therefore our own personality is 
brought into accord with Christ's by willing as He wills, feel- 
ing as He feels, thinking as He thinks. For St. Thomas 
Aquinas says (Moehler) : 

" All the faculties of the soul have been, to a certain degree, displaced 
from their proper direction and destination — a displacement which is 
called the wound of nature. But there are four powers of the soul which 
can become the conduits of virtue — namely, reason, wherein is recog- 
nition ; the will, wherein is justice ; the faculty of exertion, wherein is 
courage ; the faculty of desire, wherein is temperance. In so far as rea- 
son has been diverted from its bearing toward the truth, has arisen the 
wound of ignorance ; inasmuch as the will has been diverted from its 
bearing toward good, has arisen the wound of wickedness ; inasmuch as 
the faculty of exertion has been diverted from its bearing toward the ardu- 
ous, has arisen the wound of frailty ; lastly, inasmuch as the faculty cf 
desire has been diverted from its course, as directed by reason, tovvard 
the term of pleasure, has arisen concupiscence." 

But to will, and feel, and think as Christ does, is to be 



The Individual in Christianity. 251 

divine ; and under human limitations, either as a race or as 
individuals, that is impossible. And yet Christ seems to 
have contemplated something of this sort, for He says : " Be 
ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven 
is perfect." How, then, can we obtain Christ's Personality? 
for, with that, our perfection should be at least measurably 
certain. Our scientific analysis furnishes us an answer, and 
that answer is accurately in harmony with Revelation and 
Catholic teaching. We have seen that Personality or Mind 
advances in the scale of creation along with form. Chapters 
III. and IV. of the previous analysis perhaps tediously elabo- 
rated this connection. Matter is made to express Mind intri- 
cately, exhaustively, perpetually, progressively, and yet we 
also saw that these two entities are the diametric poles of 
being ; that, diverse or opposite in nature, they are yet, in 
place, inseparable ; est enim animus ccelestis ex altissimo domi- 
cilio depressus, et quasi demersus in terram locum divince naturce, 
ceternitatique contrarium. (Cicero.) Therefore in principle ab- 
solutely identical with the methods of Nature, though varying 
toto ccelo in plan, we find Christ's Personality imparted to His 
disciples through a ?naterial sacrament, and yet not without 
the recipient's own personal assistance. 

" That is to say, the sacraments convey a divine power merited for us 
by Christ, which cannot be produced by any human disposition, by any 
spiritual effort or condition ; but is absolutely, for Christ's sake, conferred 
by God through their means. Doubtless man must receive this grace, and 
therefore be susceptible of it ; and this susceptibility is evinced in repent- 
ance and sorrow for sin, in the desire after divine aid, and in confiding 
faith. But he can only receive it, and therefore be only susceptible of it. 
By this doctrine, accordingly, the objectivity of divine grace is upheld, and 
we are prevented from drawing down the effects of the sacrament into 
the region of the subjective ; and from entertaining the opinion that these 
consisted in mere moral and dialectic results in human feelings, consider- 
ations and resolves, which, as at the view of a picture representing Christ 
crucified, are excited within us at the moment of receiving, or even may 
precede the reception."* 

* "Symbolism." J. A. Moehler, p. 198. 



252 The Analysis from Revelation. 

But if we receive the Personality of Christ, then are we 
identified with Christ, and by reason of this identity, inclusive 
of that personal identity we have already examined, do we 
inherit Eternal Life. With a new, acute depth of meaning, 
those enigmatic words confront us : " He that hath the Son 
hath eternal life, and he that hath not the Son hath not eter- 
nal life." 

Further, our scientific analysis has disclosed that mere 
power, great as that is to survive the dissolution of our 
organism and to reinstate ourselves in a new one, is not, of 
necessity, a guarantee that we can maintain a correspondence 
with those new and higher environments into which, by the 
law of evolution, we must pass. [Ante, Chap. IV.) Between 
us and heaven "there must be a ho?nogeneity, an internal re- 
lation ; that relation which, by God's eternal ordinance and 
His express promises, exists between sanctity and beati- 
tude." (Moehler.) And even this predicament is contem- 
plated and recorded in Scripture. We are told of him 
who, though he entered to the wedding, was not fit for 
the place, " not having a wedding-garment," and Thomas 
Aquinas, the great doctor in Christian theology, has writ- 
ten : " Manifestum est autem quod inter Deum et homi- 
nem est maxima insequalitas, in infinitum enim distant." * 
(Moehler.) 

Now it is quite evident that however a sacrament be re- 
garded, or with what amount of therapeutic and creative 
power the sacrament of Holy Communion be freighted, how- 
ever mystically apprehended and adoringly received, it does 
not, as a matter of absolute certainty, make most men per- 
fect, or impart to them such grace as the possession of even 
a portion of Christ's Personality would lead us to expect, 
much less that beatification which would enable them to enter 

* ' ' For it is manifest that between God and man there is the greatest 
inequality : they are infinitely apart." 



The Individual in Christianity. 253 

into personal associations with God. To think of such a 
thing, as we see most men, is monstrous, and sheer rant. To 
conceive of that altitude of thought which shaped the world, 
which conditioned its laws, which comprehended and forecast 
its course, a mind before whose stupendous ken the marvels 
of nature are unfolded as an alphabet, into whose thought 
the thought of all humanity dwells as an atom, whose intelli- 
gence compasses the universe and rests beyond it ; to con- 
ceive of that majesty of will before which the adamantine 
rules of matter bow, and the tumult of chaos has been chas- 
tised into order and beauty ; to conceive of that heart which 
watches all and dispenses mercy, and in the inexhaustible 
detail of its feeling turns to the most humble, the poorest, the 
most abject, a heart in which all that we designate as virtue 
has reached an incandescence and intensity which no utter- 
able words can suggest, and yet which finds its home in the 
weakest and meanest, in the " still, small voice ; " surely to 
conceive of such a Personality as the companion of ourselves, 
when even on earth we are dumb and helpless among the 
great and pure, or to bring ourselves, even in thought, in any 
adequate juxtaposition or union with God, is simply the vul- 
garity of a shallow spirit, the irredeemable ignorance and 
priggishness of smart presumption. 

But if it were possible in a sacrament to assimilate even 
qualitatively Christ's Personality, to become like Him, to have 
the powers of thought quickened to supreme and energetic 
motion, the will armored against the suspicion of tempta- 
tion, the feelings aroused into noble states of wide sensi- 
tivity and sympathy, then may it not seem likely that Chris- 
tians shall be brought into perfect correspondence with God ? 
There is here a distinct dilemma, but the solution is provided 
for by that scientific examination we have finished, and is also 
in the creed of Catholicism, and hence involved in the Reve- 
lation ; and thus the scientific postulates relative to this ques- 



254 The Analysis from Revelation. 

tion, themselves hypothetical, are again sustained by revealed 
facts. 

It is no doubt possible to be brought into perfect corre- 
spondence with God through the process of assimilating 
Christ, but it is a process equivalent in character and dura- 
tion to that process we have described, by which the Ego in 
the natural man was erected, and that process was consum- 
mated by a series of physical changes in which the receptivity of 
Matter for Mind was increasingly improved in form and func- 
tion until the Mental Unit, the Ego, appeared. So the Person- 
ality, the Mind of Christ, becomes His disciples' by a series of 
sacramental applications in which the receptivity of the Believer 
is increasingly improved in form and function until the Divine 
Mind, the Supernatural Ego, appears and the Believer becomes 
" one with Christ and has ' eternal life.'' " And at that moment, 
and at that moment only, he is in the deepest and broad- 
est possible correspondence with God, and therefore lives 
with Him. Now the scientific review of zoological history 
exhibited this process of the growth of personality proceed- 
ing over an immense length of time, and through an enormous 
number of forms. The spiritual growth of the Christian up 
to that point of divine grace when Christ's Personality is his 
entirely requires also an immense length of time, and a succes- 
sion of states. The analogy presented here seems absolutely 
perfect, and if the process in one case is a matter of true obser- 
vation, and in the other of an infallible revelation, the equiva- 
lency is of startling interest. Before adducing evidence that 
revelation warrants this assertion, let us point out a distinction 
of importance in the processes. In the process by which Mind 
enters more and more extendedly into Matter, we saw forms 
improving to receive it under an impulse not necessarily 
inherent, until the Ego was made in Man ; in the process 
afforded in Christianity, the recipient, the believer, on the 
other hand, must attach the sacramental grace (or Mind) by 



The Individual in Christianity . 255 

assuming himself, de suo motu profirio, under the impulse of 
his will, more and more receptive states. This reveals the 
stupendous importance given to this life by Christian doc- 
trine, as an actual test as to whether or not we shall inherit a 
future life, and has also a curious bearing — which the reader 
may study for himself— upon physical acts of devotion. The 
language we have used, as to possessing Christ's Personality, 
is not likely, we suppose, to be foolishly misunderstood, and 
yet may need explanation. It is no literal assertion that we 
become so many separate Christs, which would be profanity, 
but that we are mentally in union and copartnership with 
Him ; as His disciples pray, are " rilled with His grace and 
heavenly benediction, and made one body with Him, that He 
may dwell in them, and they in Him ; " that they may be 
made "very members incorporate in the mystical body of the 
Son, which is the blessed company of all faithful people." 

Turning to revelation and Catholic teaching for confirma- 
tion of these positions, it is evident that we are to prove that 
Revelation or Catholic Doctrine says we are to be identified 
with Christ ; that to be so we must partake of His will, 
thought and feeling — His Personality ; that to that end an 
objective and potential office — a sacrament — is provided ; that 
that sacrament is to act unceasingly, bringing to us by small 
increments its entire treasury of power, and that our own 
progress must continue through a series of states. This task 
demands no long digression, it so entirely epitomizes the bur- 
den and principles of all thoroughgoing and advanced Chris- 
tian training. 

We are to be identified with Christ because He says : 

" He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, 
and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 

"And he that taketh not his cross and followeth after me is not worthy 
of me. 

" He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for my 
sake shall find it." (St. Matthew.) 



256 The Analysis from Revelation. 

" Whosoever will come after me let him deny himself and take up his 
cross and follow me. 

" For whosoever will save his life shall lose it ; but whosoever shall lose 
his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it." (St. Mark.) 

"Also I say unto you, Whosoever shall confess me before men, him 
shall the Son of Man also confess before the angels of God. 

" But he that denieth me before men shall be denied before the angels 
of God."' (St. Luke.) 

' ' Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, 
except it abide in the vine : no more can ye except ye abide in me. 

' ' I am the vine, ye are the branches ; he that abideth in me, and I in 
him, the same bringeth forth much fruit : for without me ye can do 
nothing." (St. John.) 

We must partake of His will, thought, and feeling — His 
Personality — because it is written : 

" He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that lov- 
eth me ; and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will 
love him, and will manifest myself to him. 

"Judas saith unto him (not Iscariot) : Lord, how is it that thou wilt 
manifest thyself unto us and not unto the world ? 

"Jesus answered and said unto him : If a man love me he will keep my 
words : and my Father will love him, and we will co?ne unto him and make 
our abode with him.'''' (St. John.) 

' ' Therefore if any man be in Christ he is a new creature ; old things are 
passed away ; behold, all things are become new. 

" Examine yourselves whether ye be in the faith ; prove your own 
selves. Know ye not, your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, 
except ye be reprobates?" (Corinthians.) 

" Be renewed in the spirit of your mind ; and that ye put on the new 
man y which, after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness." 
(Ephesians.) 

"As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in 
him : 

" Rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith, as ye have 
been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. 

" Put on, therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of 
mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering. 

" Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have 
a quarrel against any ; even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. 

' ' And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of per- 
fectness. 



The Individual in Christianity. 257 

" And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are 
called in one body ; and be ye thankful." (Colossians.) 

For these ends we are to make use of an objective and 
potential office — a sacrament, " which, in virtue of the divine 
ordinance, not only typifies but works the supersensual ; to 
wit, holiness and justice." (Moehler.) Christ says : 

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, except ye eat the flesh of the Son of 
Man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. 

' ' Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life, and 
I will raise him up at the last day. 

" For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. 

" He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me, and I 
in him. 

"As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so he 
that eateth me, even he shall live by me" (St. John.) 

And St. Paul has written : 

" For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto 
you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took 
bread : 

" And when he had given thanks he brake it, and said, Take, eat ; this 
is my body, which is broken for you ; this do in remembrance of me. 

" After the same manner, also, he took the cup when he had supped, 
saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood ; this do ye, as oft as 
ye drink it, in remembrance of me. 

" For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do shew the 
Lord's death till he come. 

" Wherefore, whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the 
Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. 

" But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and 
drink of that cup. 

" For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh dam- 
nation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body." (Corinthians.) 

This sacrament is to act unceasingly, bringing to us, by 
small increments, its entire treasury of power, for it is a repet- 
itive office : " Do this, as oft as ye shall drink it, in remem- 
brance of me ; " and if its repetition does not mean this, it 
means nothing. As Dr. Newman has said : " Christ was to 
bring perfection, and religion was to grow towards that per- 
17 



258 The Analysis from Revelation, 

fection," and the sacrament of Holy Communion has been 
again and again designated as the sacrament of spiritual 
food by which Christians do grow towards perfection. Noth- 
ing is better understood in Christianity, nothing has been 
more emphasized, and nothing is more intrinsically likely. 

' ' This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may 
eat thereof and not die." 

What, in its essence, this sacrament is, our method of re- 
search into this question of a Future Life does not require 
us to determine ; what the exact meaning of the tremendous 
words that announce it is, we shrink from asking. It is a 
material process by which an immaterial precipitation of vi- 
tality is effected under conditions prescribed in all Christian 
education, and tributary to that incorporation of Christ's 
Personality in ourselves by which the transfigured Ego is 
involved, and the absolute certainty of a Future Life on the 
basis of Revelation is secured, and secured in entire har- 
mony with that scientific basis, established in the evolution 
of the natural Ego, by which a reasonable hope of a Future 
Life was reached. 

Lastly we must show that our growth under the Revelation 
towards perfection is a growth through increasing corre- 
spondences, the types of which are seen in the evolution of 
natural forms (see Chapter V., Sci. Anal.), between our per- 
sonality and God's, or, in Spencer's terms, correspondences 
beginning in homogeneity, and passing through heterogeneity, 
to those in time, space, complexity, specialty, etc.* . Now of 
course this involves, as its objective manifestation, a series of 
states, and these are taught in Catholic theology, and desig- 
nated under that comprehensive term, much squabbled over, 
the Intermediate State. 

Mr. Gregg has said that "the Catholic Church [meaning 

* The reader will be benefited by reading the chapters on this subject 
in Spencer's " Psychology," Vol. I. 



The Individual in Christianity. 259 

Roman Catholic], with its usual profound knowledge of 
human nature, and ready system of providing for every want 
and guarding against every objection, has invented purga- 
tory." * And now the Protestant divines of Andover have 
tried their hands at the same fiction, f But is there any fiction 
about it, or invention, or a convenient solace to proselytes 
and backsliders, or a vade mecum for the theologian in his 
conflict with scepticism and evolution ? We think that Reve- 
lation furnishes strong reasons for accepting the general 
position, and the tradition of the Church has inculcated this 
belief, however insecure we may think the details of its de- 
scription as to what or where the intermediate state is. The 
idea is all that can be vigorously defended, and that is all 
that is essential. Traces of some such doctrine are indeed 
found in Revelation, but only traces, yet the whole system, 
as the foregoing considerations show, is made more intelligi- 
ble, more majestic, more exhilarating to thought, more exqui- 
site in results, more spiritual and grateful to hearts. We 
know the surpassing range of possible growths, the long 
avenues of natural progression, the wide vista of ascending 
steps which lead from a Caliban to a Hamlet ; the infinite 
distances between ourselves and others, and the whole his- 
tory of derivation by descent, teaches us to anticipate that 
God's Revelation subverts no established and universal prac- 
tice which He has elsewhere sanctioned, and which, permitted 
in this system of Christianity, makes it clear how all believers, 
the poorest and most vile, if honest, may " press towards the 
mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." 
How admirably this doctrine harmonizes with all just think- 
ing we shall see in the succeeding chapter on the Moral 
Judgment, how also it may intensify Desire, and endow life 
with a magical charm. 

* " Enigmas of Life," W. R. Gregg, p. 272. 
f See " Progressive Orthodoxy." 



260 The Analysis from Revelation. 

But the Church of Christ has held this doctrine, and 
preaches and teaches it with confidence and with authority, 
and without in any way loosening its hold upon, or debilitat- 
ing the force of the grand principles of the Redemption. 

As Dr. Moehler eloquently and convincingly writes : * 
" The solace, accordingly, is to be found in the power of 
Christ, which effaces as well as forgives sin — yet in a twofold 
way. Among some, it consummates purification in this life : 
among others, it perfects it only in the life to come. The 
latter are they who by faith, love, and a sincere penitential 
feeling, have knit the bond of communion with Christ, but 
only in a partial degree, and at the moment they quitted the 
regions of the living, were not entirely pervaded by His 
spirit : to them will be communicated this saving power, that, 
at the day of judgment, they also may be found pure in 
Christ. Thus the doctrine of a place of purification is closely 
connected with the Catholic theory of justification, which, 
without the former, would doubtless be, to many, a disconso- 
late tenet. But this inward justification now can be dis- 
pensed ; — the fulfilment of the law, painful as it undoubtedly 
is, can be remitted to none. On each one must that holy law 
be inwardly and outwardly stamped. The Protestants, on 
the other hand, who have rejected the dogma of purgatory, 
so well founded as it is in tradition, saw themselves thereby 
compelled, in order to afford solace to man, to speak of an 
impossibility of fulfilling the law — a thought which is confuted 
in every page of Scripture, and involves the Almighty in con- 
tradiction with Himself. They saw themselves compelled to 
put forth a theory of justifying faith, which cannot even be 
clearly conceived." 

Now this Intermediate State is the theological equivalent 
of those series of states through which our Scientific Analy- 
sis led us to believe we should pass, in attaining the most 
* "Symbolism." J. A. Moehler, p. 170. 



The Individual in Christianity. 261 

entire correspondence between our natures and God's. In the 
natural world we found, or accepted the finding of others, 
that these correspondences began in a correspondence in 
homogeneity, and advanced through a number of higher con- 
ditions, and with each advance the environment and the sub- 
ject were more variously related. We wish here to call atten- 
tion to the first correspondence from which all the rest arise, 
as being the scientific expression of that Sacrament of Bap- 
tism to which we have not hitherto adverted ; and we would 
invite the attention of divines to the others as fruitful fields 
for apologetical and ethical disquisition. 

Correspondence in homogeneity between an organism and 
its environment consists in, or expresses the simple fact, that 
the organism can subsist in the medium it is placed in. This 
correspondence underlies all others, and while in an amoeba 
in water, it represents the totality of the organism's corre- 
spondences, it is no less obvious in a man, among the variety 
of other correspondences, less important, but associated with 
higher functions. So the Sacrament of Baptism begins the 
series of correspondences with Divinity, by bringing the 
nature of the recipient into vitalized connection with the 
sources and media of spiritual subsistence afterwards to be 
encountered. The aim of the Revelation, so far as this ques- 
tion of a Future Life goes, is to give us the Personality of 
Christ, and hence the imperishable Ego ; and Baptism brings, 
or is meant to bring, untutored nature in a homogeneous cor- 
respondence with Christ's nature, by which homogeneity 
alone we can successfully maintain a spiritual existence, or 
assimilate spiritual food — that spiritual food being that very 
Personality of Christ. The formulary of the Church, indeed, 
says it means " a death unto sin, and a new birth unto right- 
eousness ;" and Christ said : " Verily, verily, I say unto thee, 
except a man be born of water, and of the Spirit, he cannot 
enter into the kingdom of God." 



262 The Analysis from Revelation. 

" That which is born of the flesh is flesh ; and that which 
is born of the Spirit, is Spirit." 

Baptism has regard to righteousness ; its tendency is to 
make us simply good, conformable to divine grace. A cor- 
respondence with God in heterogeneity is when we realize 
God in the exercise of all parts of our nature, intellect, will 
and feeling, in other words, to live in His intellect, His will, 
His feeling. A correspondence in time and space with God 
is realizing Him distinctly in all conditions of life or being, 
and without signs, tokens, visible indications of favor. A 
correspondence in specialty is acuteness in realization of God 
everywhere, under all disguises, forms, shows, signs, phenom- 
ena. A correspondence in generality is a realization of God 
in His works and in their suggestions of His nature. A cor- 
respondence in complexity is a realization of God through 
many channels at once. And the summation of all these cor- 
respondences, deepened immeasurably beyond our present 
mental discernment of what they mean, engenders that high- 
est form of life which is cognizant of and reciprocal with 
God's, therefore eternal, and therefore, according to the Rev- 
elation, "hid with Christ and God." 

We have shown, we think, a remarkable agreement in the 
methods furnished by Christian Revelation with the princi- 
ples illustrated in our Scientific Analysis, and we think the 
agreement cannot be considered accidental, but has a distinct 
intellectual value, as itself making evident that a Future Life 
is neither a figment of fancy nor a waif of superstition. The 
agreement is not concluded, but we wish now to indicate a 
point of difference very interesting and very significant. 

In our Scientific Analysis the chance of another life was 
seen to depend upon the development of the Ego, which again 
depended on growth of personality ; and here, in personality, 
we meant willing, thinking and feeling, and hence mere intel- 
lect, force of intention and even dramatic susceptibility were 



The Individual in Christianity. 263 

regarded, or were intended to be regarded, as potential, even 
though they had no especial expression of goodness or were 
associated with selfish or contemptible natures. In that 
analysis the element of pure intellect was given as much 
weight as the element of correct conduct. But in Christ's 
Revelation it is a moral Will and a true Heart that take pre- 
cedence. 

<( Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are 
honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatso- 
ever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report ; if there be 
any virtue, and if there be any praise, think of these things." (Phi- 
lippians.) 

" See that none render evil for evil unto any man ; but ever follow 
that which is good, both among yourselves and to all men. 

*' Rejoice evermore. 

" Pray without ceasing. 

" In everything give thanks : for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus 
concerning you. 

" Quench not the Spirit. 

' ' Prove all things ; hold fast that which is good. 

" Abstain from all appearance of evil. 

" "And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly ; and I pray Godyonv 
whole spirit and soul, and body, be preserved blameless unto the coming 
of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Thessalonians.) 

" Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have 
not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 

" And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all myster- 
ies, and all knowledge ; and though I have all faith, so that I could 
remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. 

" And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I 
give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." 

No intellectual status is mentioned here, the need of a 
penetrating understanding is not dwelt upon, the saving 
advantages of keen mental apperception, the radiant powers 
of imagination, the delirious play of fancy and wit, the recon- 
dite astuteness of philosophical acumen, or the noble energies 
of scholastic zeal and critical acquirement are not here sug- 
gested, much less made indispensable. Surely the utmost 



264 The Analysis from Revelation. 

powers of will and feeling are enlisted, the deepest and most 
subtle emotions, the finest and most admirable deportment ; 
every shade of goodness in action and in feeling is remem- 
bered, and the dominion and persuasion of sin are met with 
resolute orders to overthrow and disarm them. Feeling and 
Will are plentifully, exorbitantly, undeviatingly exercised. 
But where is any special call made upon intellect, where are 
scholarship and reason and thought remembered as needing 
development in the personality of which it forms a part ? To 
be sure a large exercise of thought is necessitated, perhaps, or 
it is at least helpful in establishing those correspondences we 
have mentioned, and, indeed, in all religious culture thought 
may be unceasingly and instructively employed. But we 
know that the message of Christ was sent as a Revelation to 
the poor and miserable, the uneducated, the deprived and 
forsaken, the simple, ay ! the stupid and ignorant, to children, 
not to pedants, or wits and poets, dramatists, lawyers, profes- 
sors, the monopolists of learning, the foolhardy and conceited 
in wisdom, the agile and intrepid minds who fathom the 
mathematics of the universe, and scale the towers of loftiest 
speculation. These are all embraced in that divine message, 
but the message itself has neither flattered nor indulged their 
consequential isolation. Is it not, then, imperfect in respect 
to our scientific expectations, that the intellect, the mind as 
popularly meant, the thinking faculties are neglected ? 

Herein enters the distinction we adverted to, which is to 
us of peculiar and singular importance. The intellect, the 
mind as popularly meant, the thinking faculties are not neg- 
lected, but are employed in what may be called a suppressed 
way. We are to believe a series of stupendous statements, 
which thinking has never made plain, and yet over which 
thinking justly is perpetually employed, and unless we believe 
them, the Revelation of Christ is to us simply useless. This 
belief, this faith is in root an intellectual assent, though feel- 



The Individual in Christianity. 265 

ing may suffuse and color it. This is the intellectual core of 
Christianity, and herein that element in Personality finds its 
nutriment. * Christ Himself repeats and repeats this necessity 
of the fact of belief in His followers ; the gospel of St. John 
bristles with its repetition to the point of wearisomeness. 

" God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that who- 
soever believeth in him, should not perish, but have everlasting life " 
(iii. 16). 

'* He that believeth on him, is not condemned : but he that believeth not, 
is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the 
only begotten Son of God" (iii. 18). 

"Verily, verily I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth 
on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into con- 
demnation ; but is passed from death unto life " (v. 24). 

" Verily, verily I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting 
life" (vi. 47). 

" For if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins" (viii. 24). 

"Jesus heard that they had cast him out ; and when he had found him, 
he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God ? " (ix. 25). 

"But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto 
you " (x. 26). 

" Jesus cried, and said, He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, 
but on him that sent me " (xii. 44). 

' ' Let not your heart be troubled : ye believe in God, believe also in me " 
(xiv. 1). 

" Jesus answered them, Do ye now believe ? " (xvi. 31). 

Many passages, directly and indirectly, elaborate and 
extend and illuminate this matter of belief ; and with them 
are statements and events which seem to outrage the very 
limits of possible belief. It is very wonderful. But see its 
interest to us in this inquiry. Belief in Christianity, if not 
simply an idiotic and passionless assent, may engross the 
largest capacity of mind, and has done so, and while it thus 
stimulates thought, by reason of the strangeness and mystery 
of the things of its faith, it keeps that thought tied to God. 
It must. But belief in the ignorant and dumb, if a reality, 

* We think that Dr. Phillips Brooks has failed to see this, in his Bohlen 
Lecture on ' ' The Influence of Jesus on the Intellectual Life of Man. " 



266 The Analysis from Revelation. 

not a coward's dodging or the sloth of a fool, leads also to 
thought. It must. The thought may be simply an emotional 
contemplation of a mystery, but it will more awaken their 
minds and develop the element of intellect in their Personality, 
than if Christ had dispensed aphorisms they could never 
understand, advised studies they could never follow, distrib- 
uted to them mathematical problems, or set about unravelling 
the intricacies of physics. It is simply the brutality of peda- 
gogic shallowness to say it does not. Belief is an intellectual 
act, and because it is so fundamentally the " educated rea- 
son " of the day rejects Christianity. We admit the difficulty 
of Belief in Christ, and in the whole marvellous System which 
incorporates it. But that is exactly what leads to mental 
activity in its defence. The perfection of its tenets and 
practice captures our Will and our Emotions, and the clear- 
ness of its promises mingled with the profound truthfulness of 
its mysteries, stimulates, as it should, and as the whole his- 
tory of religious discussion shows it has, our Intellect. And 
it stimulates our intellect in that direction wherein will and 
emotion practically can best be blended with the colder pro- 
cesses of rational research, so that our Personality in thought, 
act, and feeling is most beautifully, most harmoniously, most 
congruously formed and moulded; while, through the sac- 
raments, it assimilates the Personality of Christ, in these same 
elements, and rises to higher and higher levels, securing at 
every rise a more and more stable tenure upon Immortality ; 
and this same process goes on with the simplest and hum- 
blest, though minimized, and possibly aborted. Instruction, 
also, through the channels of church teaching in their case 
is meant, and has been given, to assist it ; and further we 
believe and can insist that the very act of belief, honestly 
done, in these extraordinary postulates of Christian Revela- 
tion, inasmuch as they are, ex hypothesi, absolutely true, 
does, without further effort, in a latent way, stre?igthen the 



The Individual in Christianity. 267 



purely mental faculties. This will doubtless excite derision 
among rationalists and agnostics, but those who are willing 
to examine it, will find it a not entirely absurd statement. 

In our Scientific Analysis we referred tentatively and with 
some misgivings to Personalities in which Will, Thought, and 
Feeling were powerfully developed, but in a perverse way, in 
a contradictory spirit or attitude towards the line or current 
of normal evolution, /. <?., perfection. In this was implied the 
possible growth in correspondences of such a Personality to 
some Entity of Badness, and its at least provisional immor- 
tality secured through union with that. This aspect of the 
case is revealed in Christ's word with a terrible certainty. 
We sincerely believe that in the Revelation the mention of 
Hell as the opposite of Heaven, and of Satan as representa- 
tive of the activities of Evil, has been most abominably 
abused ; that sectaries, baked into a kind of frenzy by wor- 
ship of that unappeasable Moloch, Calvinistic Theology, have 
raised into sight, needlessly and falsely, the execrable picture 
of Eternal Torment. 

We do believe Christ has cursed Sin, and if it is a possible 
thing to find a human being, really of sound parts, in all hu- 
man history, who, with proper opportunities of judging, has 
made himself, in will, feeling, and thought a demon, then he, 
too, is cursed. 

"Verily I say unto you all sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, 
and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme : 

" But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never for- 
giveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation." 

And, furthermore, the condemnation that Christ utters 
applies only to those who ally themselves to Him, profess 
Him, but practically dishonor and expose Him to scorn. 
Hypocrisy is the infernal crime : 

" But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness „• 
there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 



268 The Analysis from Revelation, 

" The Son of Man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather 
out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity ; 

" And shall cast them into a furnace of fire : there shall be wailing and 
gnashing of teeth. 

"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, etc., etc., . . . 
and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away. 

' ' The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for 
him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, 

" And shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypo- 
crites : there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 

" Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness : there shall be 
weeping and gnashing of teeth. 

"And these (those who made a pretence to have ministered to him) 
shall go away into everlasting punishment ; but the righteous into life 
eternal." 

Incidentally it is to be noted that the constant use of the 
visible image of fire, in connection with punishment, has no 
literal meaning, the endless recurrence of references to the 
spirit makes that evident ; it is an image of mental rage and 
anguish. 

In our Scientific Analysis we arrived at the conclusion, with 
seeming directness and logical propriety, that our future life 
would be one of physical parts ; that a body of material 
atoms would express our personality, and, it may be im- 
agined, express it with more subtlety and truthfulness, more 
intrinsic faithfulness, than those bodies we now inhabit. The 
speculative drift this starts need not be followed. It is 
purely a worthless and visionary task of guesswork. The 
Resurrection of the Body is a salient Catholic dogma ; it cer- 
tainly is the lesson of Revelation, and has been, we believe 
immemorialy, the teaching of the Church. Here, again, 
Science and Revelation are in agreement. The suggestive- 
ness of the Bible Story as to the appearance and disappear- 
ance of Christ after His resurrection, the materiality and lit- 
eralness of His body, seem to us irrelevant in this thesis; the 
single fact of a material resurrection, without any regard to 
the peculiar powers it may become involved with, or the 



The Individual in Christianity. 269 

strange incidents connected with Christ's manifestations to 
His disciples, is the sole object of contemplation, the only 
one worthy of present attention in this study. 

Finally we come to that singular and almost tragic con- 
clusion, reached in our scientific discussion, that in those 
human organisms where the Ego has not become developed 
either through physiological or racial immaturity, as in in- 
fants and some savages, there can be no rational expectation 
of any survival after the dissolution of the body. It is diffi- 
cult to treat this question without offence or with an un- 
flinching and impartial adherence to the scriptural language. 
We believe that here, again, Revelation corroborates and 
reaffirms the conclusions of science, though it softens their 
asperity and mitigates the wholesale destructiveness of their 
literal interpretation. 

We have seen that Revelation assures us Immortality upon 
the general condition of developing our Ego, or Soul, as the 
functional product of a Personality, exactly as we found Phi- 
losophy did in our Scientific Analysis. We saw that this 
Personality was developed by securing the Personality of 
Christ, and that was obtained by effort, under the assistance 
of belief in Christ, through a sacrament, and by baptism, and 
the action of these offices to effect that result have been sug- 
gested in accord with the way of looking at this subject pre- 
scribed by our scientific discussion. Now the crucial ques- 
tion under the Dispensation is, whether those who do not 
thus appropriate Christ's Personality, or some part of it, 
those who do not transplant or inoculate into themselves the 
divine nature, can expect a future life. Does Death snuff 
them out as completely as my wetted fingers snuff out this 
candle flame at my side ? We think that, with the exception 
of baptized infants, and those who are contemplated in the 
previous analysis as having built up an approximately god- 
like or infernal nature, it does or may. This may seem a 



270 The Analysis from Revelation. 

monstrous and deplorable conclusion. It certainly leads to 
seriousness, but it hardly appears to us monstrous, nor are 
we willing to think it deplorable, or anything in nature differ- 
ent from what our scientific research led us to expect. 
As Revelation has it, we read as to baptism : 

"Jesus answered, Verily, verily I say unto thee, except a man be born 
of water, and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." 
(St. John, iii. 5.) 

'■ He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved." (St. Mark, xvi. 16.) 

As to faith : 

" Verily, verily I say unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth 
on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into con- 
demnation ; but is passed from death unto life." (St. John, v. 24.) 

" Verily I say unto you. Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of 
God as a little child he shall not enter therein." (St. Mark, x. 15.) 

As to the Sacrament : 

" Verily, verily I say unto you, If a man keep my saying he shall never 
see death." (St. John, viii. 51.) 

" Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily I say unto you, except ye 
eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink bis blood, ye have no life in 
you. 

"It is the spirit that quickeneth ; the flesh profiteth nothing: the 
words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." (St. John, 
vi. 53 and 63.) 

" Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life : no 
man cometh unto the Father but by me." (St. John, xiv. 6.) 

Now these are the three conditions, and the only three, and 
on no other in the Bible is an exclusive emphasis laid as con- 
ferring immortality, and we have seen that they seem intended 
to make our own efforts to improve ourselves effective ; that 
without them these efforts fail. Now we wish to observe that 
the widest latitude of interpretation would only permit us to 
say that if one of these conditions is complied with, the chance 
of survival is secured ; but we could only say so on the sup- 
position that there was no inexorable and definite organic 
cohesion in the three, which made them all necessary, or one 



The Individual in Christianity. 2ji 

indispensable before the others were operative at all. Now 
there is a definite organic cohesion between them, and one of 
them is made indispensable before the others are operative 
at all. This is Baptism, for that secures the correspondence 
of homogeneity with God, i. <?., with our environment as we 
have said, and on that correspondence either in zoology or 
psychology, life, either sensual or supersensual, depends. It 
also deepens and accentuates the perpetuating power of demo- 
niacal sin, for the character of sin gains a higher intensity 
and intelligence when it works wilfully and with pleasure 
against consecration ; at least that seems legitimately prob- 
able. 

" And that servant which knew his lord's will, and prepared not him- 
self, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes." 
(St. Luke, xii. 47.) 

" When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through 
dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. 

" Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out ; 
and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept and garnished. 

Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked 
than himself, and they enter in and dwell there : and the last state of that 
man is worse than the first." (St. Matt. xii. 43, 44, 45.) 

Baptism, then, as the initial stage, seems essential, but the 
question whether those who have never passed beyond it in 
the Christian system of sacraments can secure a future exist- 
ence, is, we think, answered under the Revelation. It intro- 
duces that singular though not arbitrary provision in the sys- 
tem known as Predestination, or Election, which Calvinism 
has made a bugbear of, but which is undoubtedly indicated 
in the Testament. The language of Christ in this matter is 
easily understood as in harmony with all we have said. It is 
the application of this doctrine to children which is germane 
to the question raised here. St. Paul says : 

" For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or 
evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of 
works, but of him that calleth." (Romans, ix. 11.) 



272 The Analysis from Revelation. 

This directly applies also to children that are born, though 
no activity of mental parts has as yet determined their char- 
acter, and simply implies a prevision that they would form 
such personalities under the inevitable tendency of their psy- 
chic functions as would generate the immortal Ego. Noth- 
ing, of course, in the nature of things in our Scientific An- 
alysis has been disclosed analogous to this ; and it simply 
springs from the root principle of Christianity itself, i. e., that 
it is a superposed scheme in which God's personal direction 
is manifested. This, then, clears the case up as far as bap- 
tized infants are concerned, or unbaptized infants and older 
children upon whom Election acts. 

It does or may leave many who are not elected, who 
have not in any way provided the necessary equipment for 
securing another life, and from their tender years cannot, 
excluded. This will appear harsh and almost fiendishly 
cruel to many readers, but we are compelled to be as re- 
morselessly literal in our application of Revelation as we 
have been unswervingly scientific in our treatment of nature. 
And the interest of this conclusion lies in its very complete 
accordance with the results of this same scientific treatment 
(see Chap. V.); and it is also easy to show that this result 
is neither necessarily lamentable nor cruel, nor indeed even 
contradictory to the language of Christ, with which the think- 
ing of an amiable humanitarianism might imagine it clashed. 
Christ says : 

" Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is 
better for him that a mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and he were 
cast into the sea." (SS. Matthew and Mark.) 

What Christ elsewhere says is in admiration and love of 
the sweetness and simplicity of lovely children ; it does not 
lead to the special conviction that all children attain eter- 
nal life, and the implication in the above passage points to 
an already emergent Ego, and hence advanced personality. 



The Individual in Christianity. 273 

But that the reader may not lose patience, turn to the con- 
clusion of this analysis, where scope is afforded for hope 
beyond the critical limits assigned by a critical study of the 
scheme itself, and afforded, too, by this same Revelation in 
which that scheme is found. 

The second class we are driven to consider here are those 
of matured years, finished or forming habits and developed 
nature who reject the system, its sacraments and its claims. 
According to the Revelation itself we believe they may attain 
heaven or hell in another life if they succeed in building up 
" an approximately godlike or infernal nature " without the 
help of that system. Our scientific analysis has led us to see 
how difficult this will probably be for nearly all men, since 
men are neither gods nor devils. But brought, by the 
acceptance of its provisions, under the supernatural jurisdic- 
tion of Christianity, men can be provided with the divine life 
which imparts to them its immortality, and they are also 
enabled to outrage it and bring themselves, by an awful 
nemesis, into eternal antagonism to it. We say we can 
believe that, according to the Revelation itself, men may ob- 
tain immortality, without the agency of the System, by beauty, 
superiority, and fineness of nature. 

4 ' And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why 
eateth your Master with publicans and sinners? 

" But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole 
need not a physician, but they that are sick." (St. Matt. ix. II, 12.) 

" He said unto him, What is written in the law ? how readest thou ? 

"" And he answering, said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all 
thy mind ; and thy neighbor as thyself. 

" And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right : this do and thou 
shalt live." (St. Luke, x. 26-28.) 

"And we know that all things work together for good, to them that 
love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." (Romans, 
x. 28.) 

In this class are included a remarkable group of able, sin- 
18 



274 The Analysis from Revelation. 

cere and unaffected men and women who, in all honesty, 
simply cannot adopt or submit to the tests of Christian fellow- 
ship. We, speaking as believers, think that their position is 
an insecure one, so far as the likelihood of a future life goes, 
and yet the eternal purposes of God must be provident of all 
that is really worthy of survival. 

But for that number of men who, being indifferent and 
incredulous, have led not only colorless but socially unreason- 
able and probably injurious lives, who never could attain by 
zeal or thought to the point of spiritual ignition and lustre, 
and yet who also cast aside as child's play the functions of 
the Church, as a mediatrix or helper, this large class under 
the Revelation and by the Scientific Analysis, expire and 
vanish. Their mentality being insufficiently centred, their 
Ego not having lasting qualities is returned to the original 
reservoir of psychical force or is diffused in the world stuff 
of mind. This is intelligible, philosophic, just, and not to be 
regretted either by the disintegrated organisms or the world 
at large. It is intelligible, because no theory can explain 
what else logically can become of these people ; it is philoso- 
phic, because it accords with what philosophy and revelation 
says ; it is just, for as they cannot longer exist, their ephemeral 
life has supplied them with all they could evoke from it ; even 
if pain has largely tempered pleasure, their sins become as 
ephemeral as their life ; they are under the natural law, not 
Christ's, and if annihilated there cannot be disappointment or 
regret or punishment ; they have flitted over a brief panorama 
of being, have ministered in a large or small way to the 
world's necessity, and being simply incompatibly organized 
for perpetuation, disappear. This is neither lamentable nor 
horrible : it is in the nature of things ; and if in Science or 
Revelation no other alternative is offered, where can com- 
plaint enter ? And if it does enter, of what consequence can 
it be ? Few contemplate such annihilation, and therefore it 



The Individual in Christianity. 275 

does not even bring in this life the pang of regret. And 
when it occurs regret and the sense of it are equally impos- 
sible. 

Now there are passages in Scripture that suggest, if they 
do not explicitly mention, this very thing. 

" But he answered and said, Every plant, which my heavenly Father 
hath not planted, shall be rooted up." (St. Matt. xv. 13.) 

" But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that 
which was spoken unto you by God saying : 

"lam the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of 
Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living" (implying a 
"dead" that rise not). (St. Matt. xxii. 31, 32.) 

" And that which fell among thorns are they which, when they have 
heard, go forth and are choked with cares, and riches, and pleasures of 
this life, and bring no fruit to perfection." (St. Luke, viii. 14.) 

" Salt is good ; but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall 
it be seasoned ? 

"It is neither^/ for the land, nor yet for the dunghill ; but men cast 
it out. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." (St. Luke, xiv. 34-35.) 

" For I say unto you, that unto every one which hath, shall be given ; 
and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from 
him." (St. Luke, xix. 25.) 

' ' But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and 
the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage. 

"Neither can they die anymore" (herein are distinct suggestions of 
second deaths such as were premeditated in the Sci. Anal, when we dis- 
cussed the Dtirability of the Ego). (St. Luke, xx. 35, 36.) 

" For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them ; even so 
the Son quickeneth whom he will." (St. John, v. 21.) 

"Verily, verily I say unto you, the hour is coming, and now is, when 
the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God : and they that hear shall 
live." (St. John, v. 25.) 

" No man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me, 
draw him : and I will raise him up at the last day." (St. John, vi. 44.) 

" But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no 
light in him." (St. John, xi. 10.) 

" And whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die " (again an 
implication of absolute death, annihilation). (St. John, xi. 26.) 

" Then Jesus said unto them, Yet a little while is the light with you. 
Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you : for he that 
walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth." (St. John, xii. 35.) 



276 The Analysis from Revelation. 

These passages possess very strange depths of meaning, 
we think ; let all to whom the question is of interest medi- 
tate upon their subtle and mysterious significance. 

And for the greater number of those who have not met 
the Revelation to-day, or passed their lives outside of its 
area of application, and before it was vouchsafed, we think 
Revelation must place them with the class we described as 
relying on their unaided efforts to construct the indestructi- 
ble Ego, which Science or Philosophy seems to point to as a 
possible though rare achievement. As St. Paul says (Rom- 
ans, ii. 13-15): 

" For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of 
the law shall be justified. 

" For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the 
things contained in the law, these having not the law, are a law unto 
themselves. 

"Which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their con- 
science also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing, 
or else excusing one another." 

With these, too, the full force of that marvellous and 
true (speaking theologically) doctrine Election comes into a 
varied and powerful expansion of usefulness and beneficent 
exercise. But this their task is one of supreme difficulty, 
and its very difficulty only reflects upon the dangerous re- 
sponsibility of those who, under the Revelation, despise its 
requirements, and come short of its simplest claims. 

We have made a fair demonstration of the identity in plan 
of the system which Science can endorse as possibly adequate 
to insure us a future life with that of the system which Reve- 
lation offers as entirely adequate to do so. The distinction 
is evident. Science, without reference to Revelation, seizes 
the Ego as a functional product of the Personality, and in- 
sists that its increase in reality and intensity consequent 
upon the growth of the latter in its three elements of willing, 
thinking, and feeling, may enable it to survive the shock of 



The Individual in Christianity. 277 

death. Revelation actually encourages the growth of the 
Personality by offering a System by which, we are told, if we 
use it correctly and earnestly, we can effect that growth in 
all its directions and under all circumstances. And a dis- 
passionate and thoughtful examination of the Christian sys- 
tem convinces the examiner that its provisions, exactions, and 
practice are peculiarly fitted for that very end. It constantly 
urges us to remember our Soul, and that apparently irredu- 
cible nucleus is the analogue of the scientific Ego, and it 
seems to agree closely with Science in affirming that it — the 
Ego, or Soul — may become extinguished, vapid, and irreso- 
lute. 

But while Science adapts its expressions of hope in that 
Future Life to the magnificent, to the august, those whose 
apparel of mentality is rich, varied and imposing, Revelation 
with a singular directness, almost exclusiveness, and unanim- 
ity in all its multifarious parts, offers this same Future Life 
to the poor, the meek, the lowly, the merciful, the long-suffer- 
ing, the commoners of life, and also in its beneficent and 
broad charity gathers under the aegis of its liberal promises 
the sinful and dejected. Ay ! and we shall hope to point 
out briefly in our conclusion that, accepting its provisions, it 
is just these, the forlorn and simple and humble, rather than 
those who exult in the arrogance of station and pride of 
acute intellectuality, that will in reality best appropriate the 
Divine Personality of Jesus, by which, as with the transcend- 
ent stroke of genius, their own tempers and minds will start 
outward upon ascending slopes of growth, whose culmina- 
tion is quite beyond all earthly vision, quite beyond the high- 
est point which the unaided good nature and smartness of 
humanity can attain. Moreover, this chapter has shown us, 
in the minor details of the scientific and revealed schemes, 
an interesting agreement, and we reach already a sort of feel- 
ing of confidence that so far as the general question goes of 



278 The Analysis from Revelation. 

a Future Life, there is One, though it may not, perhaps can- 
not be for all. It is evident that we have argued in rather 
an apologetic vein, we have wished to point out a somewhat 
striking resemblance between Science and Revelation in Re- 
gard to this question, and, without making any exorbitant 
claims, we have found in this resemblance a support for sci- 
ence and a correlative reasonableness in Revelation. 

To us as believers, the entire current of Revelation appears 
to be a tide, strong swelling and irresistible, of symbols, sug- 
gestions, prophecies, events, preparations and premeditations 
carrying the mind onward to the fated and inevitable result 
of Christ's Resurrection, which, like a sun-rising, illuminates 
life, though in its rays some forms of misery seem more mis- 
erable, some aspects of life more terrifying, and the mystery 
of the " living and the dea<d " more inscrutable. 



CHAPTER II. 

DESIRE AND THE MORAL JUDGMENT IN REVELATION, 

We pointed out in Chapter VI. of the previous dissertation 
that Desire for a Future Life might be regarded from a sci- 
entific point of view as analogous to an instinct which varied 
in races and individuals with the variations in strength of 
their Personalities ; and as the Personality and its resultant 
Ego were made the chief scientific postulates of a belief in 
that Future Life, this reciprocal oscillation became at least 
symptomatic of such a future life. The correlated aspect 
of this subject in the present analysis is a consideration of 
the fact that the Christian Revelation urges its disciples to 
nurture this desire, and that in them it reaches a greater 
intensity than in other religions, and a higher form. The 
agreement between Science and Revelation in this matter 
again becomes evident, for as, in a scientific light, Desire be- 
came a quasi-index of a future life, Revelation, which brings 
us the assertion of such a future life, seizes upon the desire, 
reenforces it and stimulates it, and gives it an intensity which 
should be and is absolutely commensurate with the certainty 
of its own declaration that it (the desire) cannot be disap- 
pointed. And furthermore, by a remarkable coincidence, it 
makes that Desire for a Future Life depend upon the reality 
of the Person and Personality of its central figure — Jesus 
Christ — whose Personality it proposes, by its provisions, to 
convey to its subjects, who again as a matter of fact do more 
and more desire that second life as they assume His nature. 
Thus we found Desire strong where Personality was strong, 



280 The Analysis from Revelation. 

and in Christianity, where the Personality is strongest. Desire 
is also strongest. This seems distinctively and strikingly 
something else than accidental. It points to some underly- 
ing harmony in the nature of things, and in the nature of 
revelation quite beyond a transitory and partial resemblance. 

Therefore, first, is the Desire for a Future Life preemi- 
nent in Christianity ; does it characterize and proclaim it 
among religions ? Secondly, are its objects loftier and more 
distinct than in other creeds ? and, thirdly, why is it stronger 
or better or more definite ? 

The Desire for a Future Life is preeminent in Christianity: 
it does characterize and proclaim it. It certainly is found in 
all religions which have attained any valuable importance ; it 
is involved almost in the fundamental motions of the human 
mind in the province of religious feeling, since a religion which 
has nothing to offer more desirable than this life has forfeited 
its claims as a philosophy or a practice leading to correct liv- 
ing or an honorable death. And yet this Desire has nowhere, 
we think, been so ardently realized, nowhere bears so com- 
posite and subtle and engrossing a character, nowhere so 
abundantly satisfies longing and stops the mouth of lamenta- 
tion, nowhere is so intelligently expressed and so fearlessly 
confided in as in Christianity. 

When we turn to China, we are told by a recent and thor- 
oughly instructed traveller and student* that " the general 
condition of religion among the Chinese is effete ; and the 
stately formalities of imperial worship, the doctrines of Con- 
fucius, the ceremonies of the Buddhists, the sorceries of the 
Rationalists, alike fail to comfort and instruct. But the fear 
of evil spirits and the worship of ancestors, the two beliefs 
which hold all ranks and abilities in their thrall, are still 
strong ; and the principal sway the two sects exert is owing 
to the connection of their priests with the ceremonials of 

* " The Middle Kingdom." S. W. Williams, Vol. II., p. 266. 



Desire and the Moral Judgment in Revelation. 281 

burial. ' Each has exerted its greatest possible power over the 
people, but all have failed to impart present happiness or 
assure future joy to their votaries. Confucianism is cold and 
unsatisfactory to the affectionate, the anguished or the inquir- 
ing mind, and the transcendentalism of Rationalism or the 
vagaries of Buddhism are a little worse. All classes are the 
prey of unfounded fears and superstitions, and dwell in a 
mist of ignorance and error which the light of true religion 
and knowledge alone can dissipate." Desire here is extinct, 
or nearly so, because it has nothing adequate to sustain it. 

And in Buddhism can we expect to find in ordinary or 
normally constructed human beings a strong desire for a 
future life when that life is some sort of paradoxical denial 
of life ? However mystical and amorous of dissolving and 
unstable states of* being the Buddhist may be, or to what- 
ever extent immersed in philosophical speculations, he can- 
not become, unless artificially constrained, very earnest to 
accomplish or accept his own extinction. Neither is he. 
Nirvana is not made out to be necessarily annihilation, as 
literally interpreted, though it is to be suspected that only the 
tyrannical assertions of his own personal identity prevented 
Gautama from making it mean that, or his disciples from 
assigning to it that meaning. Nirvana, which has been 
regarded by some scholars as "absolute nothing," is the 
summum bonum of the Buddhist, but a more reasonable con- 
struction says * that " it represented the entrance of the soul 
into rest, a subduing of all wishes and desires, indifference 
to joy and pain, to good and evil, and absorption of the soul 
in itself, and a freedom from the circle of existences from birth 
to death, and from death to a new birth. This is still the 
meaning which educated people attach to it, whilst, to the 
minds of the larger masses, Nirvana suggests rather the idea 
of a Mohammedan paradise or of blissful Elysian fields." 

* " Lectures on the Science of Religion." Max Muller, p. 143. 



282 The Analysis from Revelation. 

Yet this conception may embrace, if such language is log- 
ically permitted, the widest possible exclusion of all thinkable 
states, for the same writer continues, "in the hands of the 
philosophers, to whom Buddhism owes its metaphysics, the 
Nirvana, through constant negations, carried to an indefinite 
degree, through the excluding and abstracting of all that is 
not Nirvana, at last became an empty Nothing, a philosoph- 
ical myth." 

But whether it is extinction or quiescence, such a doctrine 
can never fructify or establish desire. As Hardwick has 
said,* " the common cry of Buddhism was : ' It is transient ; 
it is wretched ; it is void.' With these reflections on the 
emptiness of all around him, the philosopher was laboring to 
appease the hunger of the human spirit ; or if he ventured to 
discourse of future recompense and liberation from the evil 
of our present lot, the goal to which he ever pointed is the 
state where all the elements that enter into our idea of being 
will be utterly exhausted and burnt out." 

Desire, ardent, buoyant, exulting, transfiguring, can receive 
no nourishment in this faith ; it suffers from a mean repression 
that dwarfs and disfigures it. In this religion, to use the 
language of James Freeman Clarke, f " nihilism arrives sooner 
or later. God is nothing ; man is nothing ; life is nothing ; 
death is nothing ; eternity is nothing. Hence the profound 
sadness of Buddhism. To its eye all existence is evil, and 
the only hope is to escape from time into eternity — or into 
nothing — as you may choose to interpret Nirvana. While 
Buddhism makes God, or the good, and heaven, to be 
equivalent to nothing, it intensifies and exaggerates evil. 
Though heaven is a blank, hell is a very solid reality. It is 
present and future too. Everything in the thousand hells 
of Buddhism is painted as vividly as in the hell of Dante. 

* *' Christ and Other Masters." Chas. Hardwick, p. 248. 
t "Ten Great Religions," p. 166. 



Desire and the Moral Judgment in Revelation. 283 

God has disappeared from the universe, and in His place is 
only the inexorable law, which grinds on forever. It pun- 
ishes and rewards, but has no love in it. It is only dead, 
cold, hard, cruel, unrelenting law.' 

When we turn to Brahmanism, we find that it offers more 
concrete delights to the believer, and awakens desire by a dis- 
play of physical enjoyments and spiritual indulgences. But 
they too must fail to energize desire, imparting to it ecstasy 
and vitality, because of the intricacy of the requirements 
needed for their attainment, the ambiguous labyrinth of cere- 
monial hindrances that surround them, their own enigmatical 
and various interpretations, and the elusive vagueness of their 
outlines. Desire, too, seems somewhat thwarted by the hor- 
rible details which the later Brahmanical writers assign to the 
place of punishment; but however difficult it is to reach them, 
the common believer is given in Brahmanism all conceivable 
attitudes and phases of pleasure, orientally vast and diffuse. 
We are told by Monier Williams,* that, according to the 
Vishnu-purana, the seven worlds immediately below the earth 

— " are regions, adorned with beautiful palaces, groves and streams, where 
the sun diffuses light, not heat, and the moon shines for illumination, not 
for cold ; where the air is resonant with the song of birds, and where all 
kinds of delicious food and intoxicating beverages are ready at hand for 
the benefit of those who wish to enjoy them. All seven lower regions, 
and especially the one called Patala are inhabited by demoniacal creatures 
— such as the Daityas and Dananas, of a nature not necessarily wicked, 
and in some respects superior to that of men — and notably by a race of 
half-men, half-serpents, called Nagas. These serpent demons, who are 
described as having jewels in their heads, are fabled to have sprung from 
Kadni, wife of Kasyapa, and some of the females among them are even 
said to have married human heroes. They are ruled over by three chief 
serpents, called Sesha, Vasuki, and Takshaka, who also exercise control 
over the ordinary snakes which infest the earth. 

"Again the seven upper worlds, including the world which is the peculiar 
abode of man, are inhabited by countless hosts of superhuman and semi- 
divine creatures of all kinds. Apparently some of the highest worlds are 

* " Religious Thought and Life in India." Monier Williams, p. 233. 



284 The Analysis from Revelation. 

set apart for the exclusive occupation of those beatified creatures who 
have attained a state of absolute perfection ; for example, the Siddhas and 
others. But the regions just above the earth — especially the region cor- 
responding to the atmosphere, called Bhuvar — are tenanted by numerous 
and demonized spirits of dead men, superhuman beings, who, like the 
inhabitants of the lower worlds, may fitly be designated by the general 
name ' demons.' Like men, they are generally gifted with free-will, and 
may have good or evil proclivities, and even the best of them may fall 
away from religion and virtue." 

Yama presides over the distribution of the good and bad 
spirits, and seems to discharge the duties of a disembodied 
seneschal. He reigns as a kind of president of the dead in 
the upper sky, and here " the spirits of the just, invested with 
celestial lustre, wafted by gentle breezes or borne in heavenly- 
cars, continually arrived and became themselves gods, to be 
worshipped under the title of Pitris. There they enjoy the 
society not only of Yama but of the god Varuna, also sup- 
posed to dwell there." (Williams.) The uncertainties of the 
future are many, and the barriers of ceremonial formalities 
which are interposed between the dead man's spirit and his 
possible destination, introduce a painful percentage of chance 
in his fate. Thus, " if any man is killed by a tiger, or the 
bite of a snake, or has died a sudden, violent death of any- 
kind away from his relations and out of reach of proper fune- 
ral ceremonies, he forthwith becomes an unquiet spirit, roam- 
ing about with malevolent proclivities."* "And a curious 
notion prevails in some parts of India that the better the 
man, the more mischievous will his ghost turn out to be if his 
body has not received proper cremation, or if, from any acci- 
dent, the succeeding rites have not been carefully performed 
or partially omitted." f Such attractions as their bewilder- 
ing circles of ascending, and involved, and pandemoniac ex- 
istences afford rouse, doubtless, Desire for a Future Life 

* " Religious Thought and Life in India.' 1 Monier Williams, p. 239. 
f Ibid. 



Desire and the Moral Judgment in Revelation. 285 

among the less educated and less fastidious devotees of this 
faith, but it is a poor and feeble appetite, neither elevating 
nor consuming. 

But when we approach the mystical professors of the Sank- 
hya philosophy, where a subtle and refined pantheism mingles 
with a current of poetical rhapsody and partially developed 
piety, we encounter higher grades of feeling, or at least less 
contemptible aspirations. Here it is assumed, to quote Mr. 
Alger,* 

— "that there is only one Soul, every individual consciousness being but 
an illusory semblance, and that the knowledge of this fact constitutes the 
all-coveted emancipation. As one diffusive breath passing through the 
perforations of a flute is distinguished as the several notes of the scale, so 
the Supreme Spirit is single, though, in consequence of acts, it seems 
manifold. As every placid lakelet holds an unreal image of the one real 
moon sailing above, so each human soul is but a deceptive reflection of 
the one veritable Soul or God." 

Now Mr. Johnson says that he finds "no evidence that 
earnest men have ever made a religion out of the desire of 
non-entity," and he also says that, according to the Sankhya 
philosophy, body was not escaped at death ; " it accompanied 
the soul still in its subtle form, the linga Sarira, or ' spiritual 
body,' which consisted of all those principles and rudimental 
elements which flow from Prakriti with the exception of the 
enveloping gross organs and bodily frame ; these, and only 
these, perishing at death." f 

There is thus introduced into the higher forms of Hindu- 
ism a conflict between ideas and the natural temperament in 
men, the latter repelling absorption into some extraordinary 
and vast organism, " the supreme Soul," and the former com- 
promising with that instinct, yet expressing its essential feel- 
ing that "the consciousness of individual existence is an at- 

* " A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life." W. R. Alger. 
Tenth Ed., p. 114. 

f " Oriental Religions: India." S. Johnson, pp. 360, 394. 



286 The Analysis from Revelation. 

tribute of matter ; its organ is material ; it can only be con- 
nected with the soul by self-illusion : it is no proper and 
original element of man." * The Desire for a Future Life, 
either in its lower or more elevated forms, seems a baffled 
and confused tendency of nature ; it appears either as a 
theory or a group of fictions, and the theory is inimical to 
human habits of thought, and the fictions are prodigious and 
indefinite. The Desire which is born in the atmosphere and 
under the teachings of Catholic Christianity is immeasurably 
more intense and strong. Mr. Hardwick's eloquent lan- 
guage in this connection is convincing : 

" Where in any of the Ve'das can we find a parallel to the patient trust 
in God, the glowing hope of an imperishable kingdom ? There were 
echoes, it may be, confused and often contradictory echoes, of the primi- 
tive condemnation of man's tempter ; and as evil seemed to propagate 
itself from age to age, and as the malice of the demons grew still more 
intolerable, earnest hearts would grope, despairing of all human saviors, 
for a God of truth, of holiness, of mercy ; yet oft as heathendom put forth 
these dim presentiments, and fondly as it clung to these half-conscious 
prophecies of redemption, it was never able to decipher them until the 
promise was in fact fulfilled, and meaning was imported into them by the 
announcements of the Gospel. The heart had always striven in the direc- 
tion of Christianity, but never, till the advent of the Saviour, was that 
striving made intelligible, even to itself." 

Certainty, under the conditions imposed, makes the Chris- 
tian's desire for a future life so profound and so irresistible, 
so adequate to sustain him, so indomitable before derision 
and neglect. 

Mr. R. B. Smith would modify current impressions as to 

the nature of the Mohammedan Paradise, and relieve the 

religion of whatever reproach its supposed sensual promises 

deserve. He says f : 

" So much has been said and written about the gross nature of Moham- 
med's Paradise, the black-eyed Houris, the perfumes and spices with 

* "Christ and Other Masters." C. Hardwick, p. 148. 

f "Mohammed and Mohammedanism." R. B. Smith, p. 189. 



Desire and the Moral Judgment in Revelation. 287 

which his imagination furnished it, that ordinary people may be excused 
for believing that it was mainly, if not wholly, sensual. But this is not in 
the main a true, and still less is it an adequate account of the matter. 
The passages are few in number in which Mohammed dwells much on 
these aspects of the future, and even in them much of what is said is 
explained by orthodox Mohammedans to be merely Oriental imagery, 
while some of it is especially suitable — the bubbling fountains and the 
shady gardens above all — to the inhabitants of a dry and thirsty land such 
as Arabia is." 

But there can be little question that, however leniently- 
treated, and however much glossed over or relentingly re- 
garded, Mohammed did make much of a very material 
Heaven and Hell, and, of necessity, as a human agent using 
human materials. As the same writer remarks, " Moham- 
med did not make the manners of Arabia, and he was too 
wise to think that he could either unmake or remake them 
all at once." And elsewhere Mr. Smith says : " Heaven and 
hell, indeed, were realities to the Mohammedan mind in a 
sense in which they have hardly ever been to any other 
nation." With more than Dantesque realism Mohammed saw 
the tortures of the lost no less than the bliss of the faithful. 
When the troops asked what should be their reward, the great 
man said, ' Paradise.' When they murmured over the intol- 
erable heat, he answered, ' Hell is hotter.' 

Another writer * says : 

"The religious element is inborn, and, as it is developed and cul- 
tivated without interfering with the physiological laws and tendencies 
of their being, it is cherished with an ardor and fervency inconceivably 
strong, because it grasps at a further and interminable indulgence after 
death. To neglect or abandon their religion, therefore, would be the 
total destruction of their prospects in the realms of bliss." 

From these observations, the conclusion might seem war- 
ranted that in the Moslem heart the desire for another life 
dwelt with unexampled vigor, even if its objects were neither 
noble nor inspiring. And it may, yet it is incomparably 

* "Turkey and the Turks." J. V. C. Smith. 



288 The Analysis from Revelation. 

weaker than that desire which Christianity nurtures and 
instructs. It is not a desire which starts the widening en- 
ergies of philanthropy, and the devotions of self-sacrificing 
zeal ; it is not a desire which transmutes the miseries of life 
into provocatives of patience, restraint and larger usefulness. 
The desire of the Moslem is a prolonged and almost stupid 
stare at promised pleasures which are to be realized on con- 
dition that the recipients have not lost their faith nor violated 
the rules of a narrow formulary ; in it there is no triumphant 
joy, no romance of excited and satiated spiritual feelings, no 
jubilation, no intense pulsations of affectionate yearning. 

When we look in the cultus of pagan mythology for some- 
thing answering to the force and character of Christian desire 
for another life, our search is almost fruitless. Lecky with 
admirable skill epitomizes that unsatisfactory though impor- 
tant phase of religious invention : 

" The Roman religion," he says,* " even in its best days, though an admi- 
rable system of moral discipline, was never an independent source of moral 
enthusiasm. It was the creature of the State, and derived its inspiration 
from political feeling. The Roman gods were not, like those of the Greeks, 
the creations of an unbridled and irreverent fancy, nor like those of the 
Egyptians, representations of the forces of nature ; they were for the most 
part simple allegories, frigid personifications of different virtues, or presid- 
ing spirits imagined for the protection of different departments of industry. 
The religion established the sanctity of an oath, it gave a kind of official 
consecration to certain virtues, and commemoi-ated special instances in 
which they had been displayed ; its local character strengthened patriotic 
feeling, its worship of the dead fostered a vague belief in the immortality 
of the soul, it sustained the supremacy of the father in the family, sur- 
rounded marriage with many imposing solemnities, and created simple 
and reverent characters profoundly submissive to an overruling Providence 
and scrupulously observant of sacred rites. But with all this it was purely 
selfish. It was simply a method of obtaining prosperity, averting calamity, 
and reading the future. Ancient Rome produced many heroes, but no 
saint. Its self-sacrifice was patriotic, not religious. Its religion was neither 
an independent teacher nor a source of inspiration, although its rites min- 
gled with and strengthened some of the best habits of the people." 

* "History of European Morals." W. E. H. Lecky, Vol. I., p. 176. 



Desire and the Moral Judgment in Revelation. 289 

The Epicureans derided the thought of another world, the 
Stoics believed in it faintly, and " even when they accepted 
it as a fact, they shrank from proposing it as a motive ; " 
men like Epictetus, so divine in resignation and so marvellous 
in religious sense, regarded death as a simple decomposition. 

As to Greece, to quote Milman, " the religion of Greece was 
the religion of the Arts, the Games, the Theatre ; it was that 
of a race living always in public, by whom the corporeal per- 
fection of man had been carried to the highest point." In 
neither of these religions, which formally resembled each other 
though differently appropriated in accordance with the genius 
of the two peoples, is there any strong stimulus offered to 
human hopes for a second life. The dim regions of Hades, 
the ghostly retinues that fled over the fields of asphodel, or 
reclined assuaged and numb by the waters of Lethe could 
scarcely appear as inviting spectacles to the young Sophocles, 
who trained in the Isthmian games, or strapped on the coth- 
urnus in the theatre of Athens, and but little more attractive 
to the Roman who grew his grapes along the sunny Calabrian 
hills, or struggled amid the voters in the forum, or followed 
the standards to foreign conquests. 

No ! the Greek shunned the contemplation of death, and 
exulted in the joyousness of life, content to leave the mouldy 
mysteries of the grave unconsidered and unexplained. 

Finstrer Ernst und trauriges Entsagen 
War aus eurem heitern Dienst verbannt ; 
Gliicklich sollten alle Herzen schlagen, 
Denn euch warder Gluckliche verwandt. 
Damals war nichts heilig, als das Schone, 
Keiner Freude schamte sich der Gott, 
Wo die keusch errothende Camone, 
Wo die Grazie gebot. 

And, to use Mr. Alger's characterizations, 

— "to the Roman, death was a grim reality. To meet it himself he 
girded up his loins with artificial firmness. But at its ravages among 
19 



290 The Analysis from Revelation. 

his friends he wailed in anguished abandonment. To his dying vision 
there was indeed a future ; but shapes of distrust and shadow stood upon 
its disconsolate borders ; and, when the prospect had no horror, he still 
shrank from its poppied gloom." * 

The Egyptian looked forward to a future life with certainty, 
and the practices of his elegiac rituals and the mortuary 
processes of embalming, entombing and burial, constantly 
emphasized the dogmas of his religion. He was never per- 
mitted to forget his own reality after this life, and it was 
brought in close analogy with his earthly existence, so that 
" nearly all conditions of the present life, in their most earthly 
and unspiritual shape, had been transferred into man's theory 
of the life which is to come." (Hardwick.) 

But the Egyptian doctrine of a Future Life could scarcely 
have trained a natural desire for that life into any vehement 
or boundless anticipations of future bliss. The doctrine 
appealed in a narrow way to that desire, and it could not 
give desire any greater degree of force than the limits it 
submitted to permitted. The future of the Egyptian was 
embraced in a series of incarnations, a line of material trans- 
figurations and changes by which the human nature was 
brought into affinity and experimental identity with the crea- 
tions of the animal world, and so prepared for final absorp- 
tion or companionship with Osiris, of whom all these creatures 
were partial expressions, and therefore to be realized and 
understood before the resting soul of man could assume fel- 
lowship with its author. "It was," says Dr. Clarke, "going 
back into the lower organizations, to gather up all their 
varied life to add to our own." The mind was fixed upon 
an indefinite prolongation of life, and was taught to expect 
a personal judgment, but there was nothing embodied in the 
singular and strange labyrinth that could deepen or improve 

* " A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life." W. R. Alger, 
p. 196. 



Desire and the Moral Judgment in Revelation. 291 

desire, and as Mr. Hardwick says, " the acquitted spirit, freed 
at length from the necessity of migrating to other animals, 
attained no higher destination than was commonly awarded 
to her by the wild tribes of America ; her heaven was the 
resplendent sun himself, conceived of, it may be, as personal, 
but certainly as undistinguished from the centre of physical 
illumination." 

Of the Persian, Mr. Johnson says * : 

"Life was the fire he worshipped ; living growth his ideal good. No 
sin more deadly than suicide. Never should die the flame of his enthu- 
siasm for consuming all morbific and fatal things. . . . Death he put 
far from him, his absolute negation : no contact with its decay. The 
paradise of the Avesta is the transfiguration of labor. It is a region of 
nine hundred kingdoms, full of cattle, beasts of burden, watch-dogs, and 
ruddy flames. The weapons of Yima are a golden spear, for piercing the 
earth ; also a golden plough (perhaps shovel) : with these it brings forth 
its fruits, expanding it threefold." 

Yet the Persian was, perhaps, less interested in his future 
life than the Brahman or Buddhist ; he looked for it, and 
awaited it, but even " the earnest expectation of the creature " 
hardly made itself felt in his life, or thrilled it with unmiti- 
gated and endless yearnings. 

In Christianity, at last, we find a religion which animated 
the Desire for a Future Life with supernal fires of hope, and 
transfigured lives, and brought into the obscurity of the world 
the lambent splendor of saints and martyrs and professors, in 
whom that Desire shone, fed by the oil of sacrifice and labor 
and love. It was so strong that it disordered nature, over- 
turned reason, and in frail and emotional temperaments upset 
the balance of judgment, perverted taste, and developed 
strange frenzies. If it led to eccentric purgations and im- 
molations and useless and dangerous excesses of asceticism 
among the anchorites of Egypt and Judaea, it also sustained 
the noblest acts of devotion and courage. It was the early 

* "Oriental Religions: Persia." S. Johnson. 



292 The Analysis from Revelation. 

Christians who at the stake " chanted the psalms, or lifted up 
their voices in the Christian hymns — in the " Gloria in Excel- 
sis" at daybreak, or in their even-song for the sunset, or ' the 
lighting of the lamps.' In the Coliseum whole families were 
thrown to the wild beasts, refusing to save their lives by 
throwing a grain of incense on the brazier that glowed before 
an idol. Tender women clasped their husbands' necks 
entreating them not to surrender, and little children clinging 
to their fathers' knees or the white raiment of their mothers, 
cried out : ' We shall all sup with Jesus. Let the lions come 
on !' " * If Simon Stylites made Christianity ridiculous by his 
ambiguous and dizzy gyrations and oscillations, St. Theresa 
made it glorious by wishing " that she could blot out both 
heaven and hell, to serve God for Himself alone." The 
spirit of the patient and sweet words of St. Paul, "for I 
reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy 
to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us," 
has made all true Christian lives vibratory and luminous with 
a "light that never was on sea or land." It has made the 
bondage of toil pleasant, it has unveiied the eyes of the poor, 
it has made the sordidness of commonplaces a stairway lead- 
ing to heaven, it has chastened avarice and flung a mantle of 
delight around penury ; to the sunshine of the world it has 
given the subtlety of the gayety of faith, and its gloom it has 
filled with the music of hymns ; it has met doubt with smiles 
and has turned away imprecation with forgiveness ; twisted 
into the shapes each man desired, its influence has been 
generally benign, and, whether so or not, has always been 
powerful. Speaking for Christians, Canon Liddon has said : 
"'the darkness of the grave is not less lightened by our Lord 
and Saviour than the darkness of sin or the darkness of pain. 
He has endured the suffering of death, and for Christians 

* "Institutes of Christian History." Baldwin Lectures, Bishop Coxe, 
p. 72. 



Desire and the Moral Judgment in Revelation. 293 

death is no longer dark ; it is the gate of the highest life. " * 
Singing for Christians, Keble has sung : 

' ' Prisoner of Hope thou art — look up and sing 
In hope of promised spring. 
As in the pit his father's darling lay 
Beside the desert way, 

And knew not how, but knew his God would save 
Even from that living grave. 
So, buried with our Lord, we'll close our eyes 
To the decaying world, till Angels bid us rise.f 

And if, then, the Desire of a Future Life characterizes and 
proclaims Christianity, it does so in entire accord with the 
impressive utterances and promises of Revelation. 

" Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor 
rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. 

" For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (St. Matt. 
vi. ro, 21.) 

" Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their 
Father. Who hath ears to hear let him hear." (St. Matt. xiii. 34.) 

" And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or 
father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake shall 
receive an hundred-fold, and shall inherit everlasting life." (St. Matt. xix. 29.) 

" But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him, shall never 
thirst ; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water 
springing up into everlasting life." (St. John, iv. 14.) 

" And this is the will of Him that sent me, that every one which seeth the 
Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life : and I will raise 
him up at the last day." (St. John, iv. 40.) 

" He that loveth his life shall lose it ; and he that hateth his life in this 
world shall keep it unto life eternal." (St. John, xii. 25.) 

Though these sentences, interpreted variously by all men, 
according to their dispositions and inner tendencies of 
thought, revive and strengthen Desire, their real force is to 
be estimated in connection with other passages, and with the 
character and person, under the Revelation, of Him who 

* Sermons, H. P. Liddon, " Shadows of Light." 
I "Christian Year," "Easter Even." 



294 The Analysis from Revelation. 

uttered them. To the Christian this character and person is 
the Son of God, the manifestation of Divinity in the Flesh ; 
and this amazing and stupendous conception — a consolation 
to so many, a sort of horror and madness to many others — 
gives these promises an indefinable depth and winsomeness. 
It throws around them the thrall of an ineffable sweetness, 
and elevates them at the same time into the absoluteness of 
a law. To the Christian, however much harried and teased 
by doubters, who impeach the literalness of the words, there 
is no discoverable vestige of a doubt that Christ proclaimed 
the fact of a Future Life. And what was that Future Life ? 
Here we are led to see that the objects of Desire in Chris- 
tianity are " loftier and more distinct than in other creeds." 
For these objects are two, and two only — Love and Knowl- 
edge : perfect Love by which sin is eradicated, abolished, 
killed, for it is the Love of God j perfect Knowledge, by 
which ignorance, narrowness, egotism, stupor and incapacity 
are displaced forever, for it is the Knowledge of God. These 
are its final objects, and no human thought can think, no 
human language can express, anything more profound, more 
sublime, more noble and transcending. It is neither gold 
nor silver, nor precious stones, nor flowers, nor woods, nor 
raiment, nor flesh, nor oblivion, nor work, nor arts, nor 
sciences, nor my friend, nor your friend, nor pageants, nor 
fairyland — it is the Love and Knowledge of God, in which all 
else are included, are replenished, are made possible. These 
are the thrilling things that make the Christian's hope soar 
like an eagle, that force his feet to walk the clouds of rev- 
erent reverie, ay ! and to run up and down with mercy and 
with kindness among the corridors and haunts of men. 
These are the things that pierce the clouded canopy of 
Nature, and even in this nether day bring to pass the apoca- 
lyptic visions. For of Love hath not the Revealer said : 
" And 1 have declared unto them thy name, and will declare 



Desire and the Moral Judgment in Revelation. 295 

it : that the Love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in 
them, and I in them " ? and of Knowledge is it not written, 
" And this is life eternal, that they might Know thee, the only 
true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent " ? 

Finally, if we would inquire why in Christianity the Desire 
for a Future Life is. stronger, or better, or more definite, we 
shall receive a significant answer. It is because the Revela- 
tion blends the Christian's Desire with the reality and beauty 
of a Personality. That Personality is the Christ's, in which 
the human and divine elements are so mingled that the 
human may become immortal by the divine, and it remains 
before the gaze of men to be worshipped and to be loved. 
We saw in the previous analysis (Chap. VI.) that the Desire 
for a Future arose simultaneously and advanced with the 
development of the Personality. We now see that this Desire 
is strongest in Christianity, because there a personality is 
presented to the love of humanity as objectively involved in 
that future life, and as historically proving that there is one. 
Herein lies the indomitable power of Jesus: He presents Him- 
self to the love of humanity, and He satisfies and justifies it : 

" As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you : continue ye in 
my love." (St. John, xv. 9.) 

' ' Who shall separate us from the love of Christ ? Shall tribulation, or 
distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness or peril, or sword? 

"As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long ; we 
are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. 

" Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors, through him 
that loved us. 

" For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor 
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 

" Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to sepa- 
rate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans, 
viii. 35-39-) 

Now in an article by Prof. G. I. Romanes,* under the title 
" What is the Object of Life ? " he uses these weighty words : 

* Forum, Vol. III., p. 345. 



il 



296 The Analysis from Revelation. 

11 Taking then the human mind as it is, I cannot conceive the 
possibility of any one disputing the fact that the deepest and 
the strongest of its feelings — those with which its capacities 
of happiness and of misery are most intimately involved — 
are the feelings which belong to the order of what we call 
love. No doubt in many individual cases other emotions, as 
ambition, avarice, etc. , are stronger and deeper still ; but as 
a rule of very wide generality, alike in men, women, and 
children, the ties of mutual affection are by far the most 
important constituents of the psychological fabric. Moreover 
they are by far the most productive of happiness." But love, 
to invoke all the energies of the person, must be addressed 
to a person, and the Love of God in will, thought, and feel- 
ing, would never have been truly possible, if God had not 
become Himself personal, in will, thought, and feeling, in 
Jesus Christ. This clearly implies a mystery : it no less clearly 
involves fidelity to the law and logic of human nature. And 
herein the durability, and, we might say, the omnipotence of 
Christianity rest. Well has Lecky written * : 

" It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal char- 
acter, which through all the changes of eighteen centuries has inspired 
the hearts of men with an impassioned love, has shown itself capable of 
acting on all ages, nations, temperaments, and conditions, has been not 
only the highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest incentive to its prac- 
tice, and has exercised so deep an influence that it may be truly said that 
the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to 
regenerate and soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers, 
and all the exhortations of moralists. This has indeed been the well- 
spring of whatever is best and purest in the Christian life. Amid all the 
sins and failings, amid all the priestcraft, and persecution, and fanati- 
cism that have defaced the Church, it has preserved, in the character and 
example of its Founder, an enduring principle of regeneration. Perfect 
love knows no rights. It creates a boundless, uncalculating self-abnega- 
tion that transforms the character, and is the parent of every virtue. 

' ' It was shown by the martyrs who sank beneath the fangs of wild beasts 
extending to the last moment their arms in the form of the cross they 

* " History of European Morals." W. E. H. Lecky, Vol. I., p. 9. 



Desire and the Moral Judgment in Revelation. 297 

loved ; who ordered their chains to be buried with them as the insignia of 
their warfare ; who looked with joy upon their ghastly wounds, because 
they had been received for Christ ; who welcomed death as the bridegroom 
welcomes the bride, because it would bring them near to Him." 

And Lacordaire exclaims with passionate eloquence * : 

" But among great men, who are loved ? Among warriors ? Is it Alex- 
ander? Caesar? Charlemagne? Among sages? Aristotle? or Plato? Who 
is loved among great men ? Who ? Name me even one ; name me a single 
man who has died and left love upon his tomb. Mahomet is venerated by 
Mussulmans ; he is not loved. No feeling of love has ever touched the 
heart of a Mussulman repeating his maxim : ' God is God, and Mahomet is 
his prophet.' One man alone has gathered from all ages a love which never 
fails : Jesus Christ is the sovereign lord of hearts as he is of minds, and 
by a grace confirmatory of that which belongs only to him, he has given 
to his saints also the privilege of producing in men a pious and faithful 
remembrance." 

But it is the supreme law of love to appropriate the object 
of its affection ; and if the Christian appropriates the Person- 
ality of Christ in all its parts— will, thought, and feeling — in 
all the parts of his own Personality, he has secured, under 
the Revelation, and under the scientific conclusions we have 
reached elsewhere, the certainty of a Future Life ; for his 
Ego, the product of the Personality, assumes new and higher 
assets of reality and permanence. Here, again, is suggested 
that series of ascending phases of progressive power and 
excellence after this life ; for as the Personality of Christ is 
infinite in all qualities, the process by which we repeat it in 
ourselves must be lengthened, and we must pass through a 
varied class of experiences, that the multiform aspects of that 
Personality may be appreciated, and our own capabilities be 
variously stimulated and exercised. 

In this circle of investigation we are again brought back to 
that postulate of the Ego as the positive principle of hope in 
this matter ; and as in Christianity it puts on the aspect of 
divinity by a pancreatic union with divinity in Christ, the 

* "Jesus Christ." Pere Lacordaire, p. 84. 



298 The Analysis from Revelation. 

Desire for a Future Life becomes intense because it is 
indicative of a certainty. And the force of this can be esti- 
mated from our conclusion in the Scientific Analysis (Chap. 
VI.), where we remarked that, "generally speaking, instincts 
are not faulted or led astray, and it is in complete harmony 
with the modern views of evolution, that the more vivid an 
instinct is, the more compelling and intuitive its assertion, 
then the more effectively satisfactory or perfect will be those 
actions it prompts, and the more certain the reality of those 
objects it desires." 

In turning to the implications and relations of the Moral 
Judgment, under the Revelation, in reference to the question 
of another life, we meet some difficult and debatable topics, 
which we shall not seriously disturb, and which we are hope- 
lessly incapable of handling. We said in our Introduction 
that this element in the Belief in a Future Life was a theo- 
logical element ; that it involved the action of the Will, as 
determining good or bad actions ; hence it introduces the 
question of Free Will, Moral Responsibility, Sin. In our Sci- 
entific Analysis we gave it a jejune and formal treatment, in 
conformity with scientific feeling, regarding it as a preservative 
instinct helping to strengthen character and therefore fix the 
Personality and the Ego ; and we there saw that even the 
genial latitudinarianism of science tolerated the suggestion 
that there might be " a Personality of Wickedness, which also 
by its intrinsic force generates the Ego and may claim im- 
mortality," but an immortality terrifying and scandalous. 
Now, under the Revelation, the Moral Judgment that badness 
is punished hereafter and goodness rewarded, has reference 
to the Mediatorial Nature of Christ, as it is by that that the 
repentant sinners and good men win happiness, and the 
hypocrites and implacable enemies of justice earn damnation. 
We have said that that happiness in Christianity was the Love 
and Knowledge of God, with all it implies ; we are logically 



Desire and the Moral Judgment in Revelation. 299 

driven to infer that that damnation is the Hate and Blindness 
of God, with all it implies. 

But, more narrowly yet, this mediatorial Nature of Christ 
applies to those who put themselves under Christ's jurisdic- 
tion, or to those who by agencies and combinations beyond 
our knowing are put under His jurisdiction ; as the wide world 
outside of the narrow pale of Christendom, and the wider 
world that lived and died before Christ's coming. It does 
exclude those who perversely or unfairly reject Christ's dis- 
pensation, or who are carelessly indifferent to it, or who 
honestly, either from temperament or education, disdain it. 
Whatever ultimatum these may reach (and in our Conclusion 
to this section we shall display the wide horizon of hope there 
is for all), plainly the Moral Judgment as relating to penal- 
ties and rewards hereafter, under the Revelation, is most safely 
treated with relation to those who accept that Revelation, and 
those only. Stated briefly, the law is this : that these persons 
are entitled to expect as much of happiness hereafter as they 
bring their Wills in union with Christ's Will, and may con- 
sider the disunion of their Wills with His to be a prophetic 
measure of the degree of their future punishment. 

We have shown, or indicated, that the whole force of the 
Moral Judgment assumes volitional acts determining con- 
duct. It lays stress upon the Will, and we think (whether 
literally or permissively interpreted), Free Will. Revelation 
says we are to conform our wills to Christ's, and that not as 
slaves but as freemen. In an instant, for most men, all is 
changed ; conflict and clamor succeed the calm of purely 
natural states. We are summoned to assert ourselves, to 
make choices, to take sides, to align our members in view of 
an extraordinary and supernatural criterion. To employ the 
fine language of Prof. Ferrier, used in another connection, 
" an antagonism is now commenced against passion, and who 
can say where this antagonism is to stop ? The great unity 



300 The Analysis from Revelation. 

of sensation — that is, the state which prevailed anterior to the 
dualization of subject and object — is broken up, and man's 
sensations and other passive states of existence never again 
possess the entireness of their first unalloyed condition, that 
entireness which they possessed in his infantine years, that 
wholeness and singleness which was theirs before the act of 
negation broke the universe asunder into the world of man 
and the world of nature."* For them Christ has brought 
not peace, but a sword. And if it is not warfare, it is a tur- 
moil of vexatious and interrupted conceits and indulgences, 
unusual tasks, troubles with temper, the perplexing resump- 
tions of old ways, the inextricable knots of social follies, the 
evils of money, the crimes of poverty, the extravagances of 
irritation and envy, the low hesitancy and then insinuating 
excesses of lust, the little rampant vanities, the sordid crav- 
ings, the stale parsimony or the vulgar waste, rancor and sur- 
liness, shallow enthusiasms and green credulity, flattery, and 
selfishness, that, jackdaw like, are hidden in the plumes of 
borrowed goodness, the pits of discouragement and bogs of 
despair. But for most or for many men, this concord of will 
with Christ's is impossible, above all impossible to give it 
each gentle deflection, each upward curve, and follow with 
minute complementation its entire course. Here enters, 
under the Revelation, the Moral Judgment, which detects the 
discrepancy, and carries the vision of the believer to another 
world where it must be rectified ; and here, also, enters the 
beneficent results and agency of Christ's mediation which, 
appropriated by the process of repentance, confession and 
satisfaction, renews the ruptured union and brings the human 
will into adjustment with the divine. How this mediation 
acts we could not discuss here, nor does any discussion make 
it clear — at least scientifically clear. Indeed, may we not 

* Introduction to " The Philosophy of Consciousness." J. F. Ferrier, 
p. 182. 



Desire and the Moral Judgment in Revelation, 301 

exclaim, with the fine indignation of Dr. Brooks : " He who 
tells me that he will read to me now the mystery of the death 
of Jesus, shuts my ears with his very offer. I will not let him 
tear for me the mystery of the dawn which no hand can 
hasten as it slowly brightens to the full morning." 

But it can be shown that the third incentive to a Belief in 
a Future Life which we have called the Moral Judgment 
does, under the Revelation, force us to assert that there is 
one. For as it implies the conformity of our will with Christ's, 
it implies the assumption in part of His character by those 
who are thus conformed. For let it be observed that this 
conformity is no weak mimicry and simply pious subjection 
of our wills to Christ's commands. It is this, but it is also 
instinct with life, for " to as many as received Him, to them 
gave He power to become the sons of God ; " it is a con- 
formity, indeed, in the arrangement of parts and in the guid- 
ance of action, but it should be no artificial external pattern- 
ing, no forgiveness of offences with bitterness in our hearts, 
no casting out sin with a cherished relish for it unrebuked. 
If, then, we gain Christ's Will, however long and arduous 
may be the effort, and though we secure it so imperfectly as 
to leave the most of our lives sodden with weakness ; and 
even if, from physiological infirmities, we do not gain it at 
all ; whatever the result, the process in its technical conse- 
quences has furnished us or has not furnished us with a part 
of the Personality of Christ — His Will. 

But to gain the Will of Christ is largely to feel and think 
with Him ; as a matter of fact the connections are indisso- 
luble here, and are too obvious to need illustration. Thus 
we grow into the character of Christ, helped of course by 
other agencies, under the dispensation, noted elsewhere 
(Chap. I. of this Analysis); and as character "indicates the 
degree in which a man possesses creative spiritual energy ; 
is the exact measure of his real ability ; is, in short, the ex- 



302 The Analysis from Revelation. 

pression, and the only expression of the man — the person," * 
we become endued with the particular vitality of Christ and 
survive death. We become formed of the tissue and texture 
of Divinity, "the most real and unwasting material of the 
universe — something which moth and rust cannot corrupt, 
nor death with the tooth of its savage chemistry impair." f 

And there is an obverse to this ; let us regard it with 
solemnity and with a sort of hidden doubt. There may be 
some who, having put themselves under the jurisdiction of 
Christ, play havoc with their spiritual potentialities, and spoil 
and foul the crystal sources of spiritual life. For them it is 
written : " Behold, I come quickly j and my reward is with me 
to give every man according as his work shall be." 

But, practically, the work of securing anything like perfect 
conformity of will is a long and peculiar operation ; it requires 
agencies outside of ourselves, and it requires powers within 
us greatly energized and greatly extended. The intermedi- 
ate state is again brought into view. Whatever it may be, it 
is pertinaciously encountered under science and under Reve- 
lation, yet always as a logical probability. The Church holds 
it by tradition, and men hold it because of its intense inter- 
est. It is certain that there are many men of whom, while 
it would be inhuman to say they were unworthy of a future 
life, it would be foolish to say they could become the com- 
panions of God. The very statement in cold words reveals 
to every one chasms of separation which it would require 
astounding transmutations to elide. And astounding trans- 
mutations are not here, in this world, the rule of spiritual 
growth, or of any other kind. It is permissible to believe 
that changes hereafter may be rapid and may be remarkable. 
The question is, Is the law of growth entirely superseded ? 
The Catholic Church has said not. 

* " Character and Characteristic Men." E. P. Whipple, p. 3. 
f T. Starr King. 



Desire and the Moral Judgment in Revelation. 303 

These are the reflections, in reference to a Future Life 
under the Revelation, suggested by the Moral Judgment 

Finally, the Christian is asked for his proofs of a second 
life. Science has none. What are his ? Arguments and 
analogies, the fine-spun web of philosophical theology ; the 
dim, impalpable syllogisms of inferential psychology and 
mystical imagery bring no answer to that invincible and 
dogged question, " How are the dead raised up ? and with 
what body do they come?'' The Christian has but one 
proof, one fact. It is the Easter Morning in the garden of 
the sepulchre. On that his eyes are fixed steadfastly and 
with gratitude. No veil of doubt draws between the beauty 
of that scene and the quickened imaginations it stirs in his 
own soul. If it grows dim at all, it is because the insuffer- 
able sense of his own unworthiness clouds it with tears. But, 
whether bright or dim, he frames it with darling hopes, he 
proffers it his adoration, he receives from it his peace. In it 
he sees 

" Truths that wake 

To perish never ; 
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor, 

Nor man nor boy, 
Nor all that is at enmity with joy 
Can utterly abolish or destroy." 



CHAPTER III. 



CONCLUSION. 



Macaulay, in his essay on Von Ranke's " History of the 
Roman Popes," says : " As to the other great question, the 
question what becomes of man after death, we do not see 
that a highly educated European, left to his unassisted rea- 
son, is more likely to be in the right than a Blackfoot Indian. 
Not a single one of the many sciences in which we surpass 
the Blackfoot Indians throws the smallest light on the state of 
the soul after the animal life is extinct. In truth, all the phi- 
losophers, ancient and modern, who have attempted, without 
the help of revelation, to prove the immortality of man, from 
Plato down to Franklin, appear to us to have failed deplor- 
ably." We suspect this language is vitiated by exaggeration 
if not by ignorance, but its main statement is incontestable. 
Without revelation the firoof of immortality is simply impos- 
sible. There is none, and there was never meant to be any. 
This gives the Revelation a paramount interest, and one it 
will never lose through all the fluctuating phases of belief 
and disbelief. Yet it is not true that considerations outside 
of revelation do not throw some light on this question. They 
do ; and if they did not, we venture to say we should reject 
the Revelation which tells us there is a future life. That is 
to say, were Revelation to tell us of a future life, and upon 
an investigation of nature not the slightest discoverable sug- 
gestion of its possibility could be found, we should say, at 
this day, we are entitled to dispute its claims. The remark- 
able thing about the Christian Revelation is, that investiga- 
tion of nature is more and more proving its reasonableness ; 



Conclusion. 305 



and by nature we do not mean simply bugs and flowers, 
rocks and fossils, animals and skeletons, but the mental and 
moral universe as well. We have attempted, in this essay, to 
question nature on this subject. We found that the incen- 
tives to a Belief in a Future Life were three, and that an ex- 
amination of these three, without any reference whatever to 
Revelation, left us in possession of some important conclu- 
sions that, without in any sense proving such a Future Life, 
permitted us to regard it as possible, and also established for 
us certain views as to what that Future Life might be. And 
this examination also led us to a new appreciation of some 
inherent difficulties which enhanced the apparent uncertainty 
of that future existence, and made it a somewhat exclusive 
destiny for a few favored and powerful natures. Indeed, the 
Scientific Analysis of this question appeared to enforce the 
claims of Christian Revelation, that some special and tech- 
nical process of supramundane efficacy must be instituted 
before the race could confidently expect a Future Life at all. 
When we examine the utterances of the Revelation and the 
teachings of the Church, we find that the principle of compe- 
tency enunciated by Science is repeated in terms of the most 
rigid and uncompromising severity. That principle of com- 
petency is the possession of a strong Personality, and there- 
fore of its "functional product," an irreducible and meta- 
physical Ego of intensity. The Christian Revelation insists 
on this, but also coincides with Science that, unaided, Man 
as a race cannot establish or produce it. It steps in at a 
critical point and offers to man the revenue of force which 
flows from a Personality, which, ex hypothesi, is immortal, viz., 
Christ's. And it offers this Personality through a system 
which is in accord, in principle, with that system discovered 
in nature by which the elements of personality — the Mind — 
are incorporated in the human organism, viz., a system of 
material concomitancy. That is, as we found, in a long review 
20 



306 The Analysis from Revelation. 

of evidence, that certain highly organized forms of matter 
were invariably associated with mind, and, equally, mind with 
them ; so under the Revelation we find the attributes of 
Christ's Personality invariably associated with a material sac- 
rament. The objective phases of the two associations are 
completely diverse, but the principle is identical. Of course 
this brings us to the contemplation of a mystery, but probably 
one not more mysterious than the union of mind and matter 
in the human animal, and, at any rate, in this study we are 
dealing with facts as we find them, both in Nature and Reve- 
lation. The key-note, then, of the message of Science in 
regard to this question is — Personality ; the key-note of 
Christian promise is also — Personality. Science defines the 
necessity, but offers or recommends only human and natural 
methods to secure it ; Revelation accepts the finding of Sci- 
ence, but offers a method supernatural in essence and super- 
natural in power : 

"For when we speak of character (personality) as a thing absolute, a 
whole, compact and complete in all attributes, there can be only one gov- 
erning law, one determining principle, which is union with Christ. Only 
as the man, the woman, the youth is in Him, and as He is in the heart, 
and conscience, and understanding, and will of each, can any one of the 
worshippers in any one of the congregations come to ' the measure of the 
stature ' of character (personality) acceptable to God or sure of salvation " 
(Bishop Huntington). 

Again, the scientific conclusions and the Christian conclu- 
sions as to the limitations implied in the world, as we see it, 
in regard to the probability of all men securing a future life 
are harmonious. Science said it was impossible ; Revelation 
also says it is impossible ; but whereas Science is indifferent 
to the fact, Christianity in a thousand ways works to lessen 
and circumscribe the disaster ; ever holding in her hand that 
divine elixir which shall renovate the shabbiest existence, and 
replenish the exhausted or insufficient springs of spiritual 
power. Science speaks of a material body in the next state ; 



Conclusion. 307 



Revelation asserts it. Science suggests that the freed Egos 
of men pass from this world ; Revelation says the Souls 
of men do, and experience assents to both. The scientific 
force of a Desire for a Future Life and the Moral Judgment 
as to rewards and punishment were found effective in their 
application to the facts and status of Christian life and 
creed. 

Thus we encounter an agreeable continuity of thought in 
the positions of Science relative to this question as far as 
Science can discuss it, and the statements of Revelation as 
far as they are intelligible. We pass from the speculations 
of the one to the didactics (?) of the other without a shock, 
except — that the /acts of Revelation admit of no natural inter- 
pretation and its claims are quite beyond Science to explain 
or to defend. But to the educated Christian this is a great 
benefit ; he does not expect Science to make clear a mystery, 
or read into Revelation a discourse on animal magnetism or 
biogenesis ; he does expect that to-day Science, embracing 
Philosophy, can throw some light on this remarkable subject, 
and he may rejoice to learn, that the focus of those lights is 
the same with the focus of the sun of certainty which illu- 
minates and transfigures the pages of Revelation. 

In closing, we would briefly allude to two subjects : the 
probable possessors of a future life under the Revelation ; 
and that amplitude of hope, outside of the limits of its criti- 
cal interpretation, which even the Revelation of Christ opens 
to all men. For the first inquiry, reading the Revelation and 
remembering the laws laid down upon which the security of 
a future life depends, viz., the assumption of the Personality 
of Christ, by which the divine Ego is created, we think that 
it will be chiefly, those who suffer. This may seem a hard 
and unamiable conclusion. But seemings have nothing to do 
with it — what are the facts ? The fact in the Revelation is 
this: 



308 The Analysis from Revelation. 

"And he that taketh not his cross and followeth after me, is not 
worthy of me." 

" Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give 
you rest." 

And the fact in life is, that by suffering alone is character 
builded, is compassion engendered, unselfishness perfected, 
and the miraculous delicacies of spiritual natures nurtured, 
the flowers of hope born, and the finer powers of introspection 
developed. There is some deep kinship between Christ and 
sufferers ; He turns constantly to them, as if they alone 
kindled the words of His mission upon His lips ; as if He saw 
in them Himself slowly forming ; as if they, the enigma and 
disgrace of the world, were through Him to become its light 
and its glory. And there is a deeper, deeper wonder yet in 
this. Christ is no dilettante, a connoisseur of simply intricate 
characters, chiselled into minute arabesques of emotional 
strains and fancies ; He comes right down to sordid wretched- 
ness, He would pour the glory of His presence upon the com- 
monest bed of disease, and bathe in His love the very rags of 
beggars. There is something refulgent and marvellous in 
this. How it beats down the web of social exclusiveness, 
the paltriness of class distinctions, the atrocious massacring 
pride of mere money and mere brains. 

But in the sufferer who " beareth all things, believeth all 
things, hopeth all things, endureth all things," there must go 
on, we think some singular segregation of divinity. Christ 
must come to him in some very real fashion, working within 
him tapestries of beauty which will outlive this life. Perhaps 
it is because to those sufferers who turn to Christ He is 
actually everything to them, and, thus absorbed, permeates 
them with the resplendent potentialities of a life that never 
dies. This should not be misunderstood ; suffering is no 
special prerogative of one set of men ; it goes up and down 
the scale of life, and sits with weary brow in the chambers of 



Conclusion. 309 



kings and in the tenements of the poor. Let no man worry 
at it, or chase it. It may be the guerdon of a life where 
there is no suffering ; it may answer this very question which 
we have striven to penetrate. 

For the second inquiry, as to what hope there is for all 
men : We have followed a critical discussion, and although 
Christianity opens wide benevolent arms for the reception of 
all kinds and conditions of men under its provisions and its 
conditions, it is quite certain that we find a great number 
permanently and rightly excluded from any hope in the 
matter. This in itself should neither astonish nor irritate 
any one. This reign of law is quite as omnipotent in God's 
dealings with men as it is in that nature which He has cre- 
ated and of which they are a part. Neither does it- amaze 
us to contemplate the extinction of many excellent people 
who are unwilling, are indeed honestly incapable, of ac- 
cepting the Christian Scheme, and reject its technical assist- 
ance. We do not know, indeed, that they become extinct, 
since our Scientific Analysis pointed out a possibility of self- 
preservation, though the Christian might rigorously deny this. 
But if they are annihilated, by the working out of an inherent 
law, we conceive that it is the most thorough-going and pro- 
found optimism to say that it makes no matter. For it must 
be remembered, as an offset, if we are to descend to this low 
form of balancing estimates, that the Christian himself assumes 
responsibilities which may bring him to states worse than 
extinction. 

But we confess we are not anxious about humbugging 
Christians or painstaking doubters ; but we are anxious about 
that vast mass of grovelling humanity, the criminals by posi- 
tion rather than by nature, and also those who by heredity 
and taint of blood become besotted and vile ; we ace anxious 
about the many to whom Christianity is a sealed book, or to 
whom it appears in intolerant or vicious forms ; we are anx- 



310 The Analysis from Revelation. 

ious about the ignorant, the blinded, the soured and unhappy, 
those who become debased because society offers them only 
debasement, and offers them that with curses. If Chris- 
tianity is a System of inexorable Law, what is to be done for 
these unfortunates ? We indeed know that Christian men 
and women struggle with this problem, and move mountains, 
but " from whence can a man satisfy these men with bread 
here in the wilderness " ? while one is rescued, a dozen may 
perish. God's curse may, indeed, fall on the sharks and glut- 
tons, hyenas and vampires, witches and Hecates, Beelzebubs 
and Molochs, who fatten on human sin and human toil. But 
that is valueless as a remedy, though it appease judgment. 
What, what is to become of those to whom this life is a 
nightmare, and to whom, by all the reasoning and revelation 
we have studied, the next world is to be a blank ? What of 
those who, before Christianity was a fact, and those outside 
of it to-day, endure illimitable wrongs, the herds and hosts 
who go down to the grave crushed by monstrous injustice, 
or poisoned by distress and poverty? We ask this in no 
ribald or defiant spirit. Nay ! it is the spirit of Christian 
feeling which forces people to ask such questions at all. 
Science, as we saw, had no tears for these multitudes. To 
Science it was a zoological and metaphysical necessity that 
they should wither and die as the grass of the fields. Science 
gave immortality to the Caesars and Catos, the Antonines 
and Platos, the Alexanders and Rameses, but for the slaves 
and crippled ants who work for these great men it had no 
thought, except perhaps one of calm satisfaction that their 
deaths exemplified a general proposition. To be sure Science 
has stoical considerations of much nobility to excuse or hide 
its heartlessness, and we have given them. But is there no 
certain response from Revelation ? There is, and it is one of 
extraordinary interest. 

"And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take 



Conclusion. 311 



away this cup from me : nevertheless, not what I will, but what thou 
wilt." (St. Mark, xiv. 36.) 

This is a startling passage, and bears in it implications 
that at least make all things bearable, and assuages the dis- 
consolate grief of the world with far-reaching possibilities. 
Think of it. Here was Christ, the Son of God, foreordained 
to suffer, and for whose advent a special and difficult series 
of events had been miraculously directed, praying to have 
that inevitable Passion of the Cross taken away, praying to 
have the whole scheme of Redemption altered or modified, 
or in some way re-adjusted. And why ? Because to God 
all things are possible. God's own deepest premeditations 
and plans might be overruled by Himself. There is some- 
thing almost stupefying in this. But when the stupefaction 
passes what a flood of light flows in over the desert and 
abyss of the earth's misery and degradation. True, there are 
Laws under the Revelation, and under Science, by which a 
Future Life can be obtained, and true it is that as far as 
human eyes can see there is no hope outside of them ; but 
true it is also, that to God all things are possible. Christ has 
said it. If it were a reality that Christ could pray — and surely 
He could not have prayed at random and aimlessly — to have 
His Passion averted, then it is possible and best for us to 
pray, that the very limitations prescribed by Revelation shall 
be themselves dissipated through the wonderful power and 
mercy of God — to whom all things are possible. Christian 
teaching suffers no subversion from this, no lesion or sub- 
traction. It remains inviolate and portentous. Those under 
the Law shall live or die by it ; but those outside of the 
Law shall come under individual dispensations, as they are 
fit or unfit ; and that fitness or unfitness will be judged 
by a God who will weigh all disqualifications and impedi- 
ments, the poverty of opportunities, the dismay and terror of 
perpetual temptations, the indigence and sepulchral nar- 



312 The Analysis from Revelation. 



rowness of temperaments and conditions of life. It is 
enough. 

" Our soul is escaped as a 

Bird out of the snare of the fowlers : 

The snare is broken, and we are escaped. 

Our help is in the name of the Lord 

Who made heaven and earth." 

Solemnly the ranks of humanity move down the slopes 
that enclose the Sea of Death. They disappear within its 
waters, or grow shadowy before they reach it, amid the 
mists that steal along its borders. It is well to know that, 
whether deep or bottomless, it has further shores, and many 
will pass from its turbid tides to walk their gleaming sands. 



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